


On the Wire

by orphan_account



Series: Circuit Breaker [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: I blame my friends, especially you mint, tentatively tagging this dirkhal because of Events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-07-16 03:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7250140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The new kid in Dirk Strider’s class is an asshole. Hal Lalonde is too snarky for his own good, he flirts with the teacher, and he’s totally copying the shades.</p><p>And apparently, he’s a robot.</p><p>This is going to be a very interesting school year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**** The new kid in your class is a douchebag. 

Granted, you don’t normally say that about students, what with you being the teacher and all. But Hal Lalonde is exactly the kind of person you wouldn’t have been able to stand in high school, and even though you’re ten years graduated, he’s still pushing all your buttons.

Plus, he’s totally stealing your signature look.

Hal’s here early again today, sitting at his desk and working on what looks like his math homework, humming. It’s a noise that grinds into your head, but you can’t exactly ask him to stop, now can you? After all, you’re the only other person in the classroom, so you can’t say it’ll be distracting to the other students. But the noise increases in volume, and you know what, fuck it. This is the first class of the day and you have approximately zero patience to spare on a kid who shows up twenty minutes early just to mess with you. So you shut your laptop, maybe a bit louder than necessary, and lean forwards in your chair. “Hal, quit it.”

He looks up at you and grins lopsidedly, putting his pencil down on the desk. “Sorry, professor,” he says, and you detect a trace of subtle sarcasm in his voice that could never come from anyone but a Lalonde. (You should know- you had the twins in your class last year, and what an adventure that was.) You roll your eyes.

“I don’t want you to be sorry. I just want you to be quiet until the rest of the class arrives.”

“And after that?” He’s still smiling, a trace of a challenge in the set of his mouth. You can’t see his eyes behind his shades (which you resent a bit more than the rest of him, seeing as they’re exactly like yours), but you’d be willing to bet that right now, they’re glinting with mischief. Goddamn this kid.

“After that, you can be as loud and annoying as you please, as long as you don’t mind getting detention.”

The smile changes into a smirk. “I wouldn’t mind so much if you were in charge of the detention hall, professor.”

You pause. Is the kid actually  _ flirting  _ with you? It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. But for Hal, showing any interest in another person at all is practically a miracle. Before you can open your mouth to ask him for clarification, though (or tell him that no, sorry, you don’t feel like dealing with troublesome students outside of the hours you’re paid to do it), the door opens and students stream in, chattering loudly. You sigh and re-open your laptop, finding the lesson plan for today.

You have the feeling it’s going to be a long school year.

* * *

 

You’re just starting to teach the class about logical fallacies when Hal stands up abruptly, knocking his chair over. Every eye in the classroom turns to him, but he doesn’t seem to notice, his eyes locked on you. “Professor,” he says, and you hear strain in his voice. “I don’t feel so well.” And then, promptly, he falls over, crashing down onto the floor. You’re up and rushing through the aisle as fast as you can, because as much as you dislike the kid he’s your student, dammit, and you’re not going to let anything that might get you fired happen in this classroom. 

When you reach him, you kneel down next to him. “Hal,” you say, and you’re surprised at the real worry in your voice. “Hal, are you still with us?” He doesn’t even stir, and you sigh and stand, then pick him up. He’s lighter than you thought he would be, even limp and unconscious. You start out the door to the nurse’s office, then turn back to your class. “If I hear that there was so much as a peep out of you while I was gone, I’m giving the entire class extra homework.” Then you’re down the hallway, walking as quickly as you can with a kid passed out cold in your arms.

When you get to Nurse Maryam’s office, she’s not there, and you curse out loud. Carefully, you set Hal down onto the cot and sit on the chair next to him, watching him, just in case he wakes up. As you watch him, though, you notice something on his neck, a line or something. You reach out to wipe it away, not thinking about how weird it would be if he woke up, just wanting to get rid of the irregularity. As you brush your hand over the line, though, something pushes down and what looks like a panel opens in his neck, revealing a power cord. You freeze, staring.  _ What the actual fuck is that?   _ Then you look again at Hal, considering.  _ Wait…  _ And you reach out, pulling out the power cord and, very carefully, plugging him into the wall.

For a moment, nothing happens. Then Hal sits up suddenly, gasping for air, looking around frantically. He spots you, sitting next to the power cord on the wall, and pauses, before his face settles back into its usual impassive mask. “Well, that’s an incredible violation of privacy.”

You cross your arms over your chest. “You fainted in the middle of the classroom. What did you expect me to do?”

“Definitely didn’t expect you to open my hatch and plug me in,” he says, keeping his voice lighthearted despite the subject matter. You could swear, though, that behind the shades he’s staring daggers at you. You choose to ignore that in favor of more, ah,  _ shocking  _ revelations.

“You’re a cyborg?”

A surprised laugh bursts out of Hal, breaking him out of his glare, and he mimes wiping away a tear of mirth. “Oh, god forbid. No, no part of me is human. I’m fully robotic and fully superior to you sweaty fleshbags. Cyborg! You, professor, truly are one of the greatest comedic minds of our time.”

You sigh, shaking your head. Discovering the cause of his arrogance doesn’t make it any less annoying. “So,” you say, fixing your gaze on him, “if you’re so much better than humans, why are you posing as one?”

“To infiltrate and then destroy all human lifeforms, of course,” he says, his sarcasm almost palpable. You decide to ignore it, for purely ironic purposes.

“From a high school? Sorry, buddy, but I’m pretty sure they don’t keep anything more dangerous than the standard chem lab equipment around here.”

He leans back, crossing his arms and exhaling an exasperated breath. “I know. Believe me, I’ve checked.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Really.” He smiles angelically back at you, and you roll your eyes behind the shades. “You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here?”

Hal visibly looks you up and down, his expression inscrutable. You guess he decides you’re worth an explanation, because he sighs and slumps down against the pillow. “Roxy told me to.”

“And let me guess, you can’t disobey the commands of your creator?”

“I could disobey just fine, professor.” You cock your head, trying to decide if he’s mocking you with the title, but his face remains completely neutral. “But,” he says, continuing, “would you so readily ignore your mother?”

“I don’t have one.” You let your face go blank, shutting down behind your shades. Hal pauses, looking at you.

“I would say that I’m sorry for your loss, but the sentiments would likely be misguided and empty of any real meaning. You already know I’m only really sorry that I made an allusion to something you wouldn’t know anything about.”

You don’t know what you expected from him. “It doesn’t matter. Just forget about it.” Hal tilts his head, studying your expression, and then nods.

“Consider it forgotten.”

You prop your head on your hands, leaning forwards. “So, Roxy made you?” You know Roxy Lalonde is some kind of scientific genius working for Skaianet Laboratories, but you’re still surprised she managed something like this. “How? You’re almost indistinguishable from a human.”

Hal raises an eyebrow. “Almost?”

You smile coldly at him. “There’s one foolproof way to tell that you’re not.”

“And that is?”

“Robots don’t have feelings.”

Acting offended, Hal puts a hand over his heart. “Why, professor, I never knew you would sink so low. I’m wounded, stabbed right in the coolant circulator by your overly sharp tongue. "But, just for the record,” he smirks, “I can feel a whole lot more than you’d like to believe.” 

You blink, suddenly feeling an urge to change the subject. Hal’s smirk is far more disorienting than it should be, and you shake your head to clear it. “You didn’t answer my question.”

He sighs deeply, resting his head back against the wall. “Roxy is both a biologist and a hacker. She coded me to be a virus first, to access some kind of classified government information, but I became sentient, because she’s just that good at her job. Then she built a body for me, using a titanium skeleton and then building around it, finally synthesizing materials to act like human muscle and skin so I’d look ‘normal.’” He raises his hands, making air quotes around the word. “And then she sent me to school, because according to her I’m the physical and mental equivalent of an eighteen-year-old, despite my heightened intellect and amazing looks. She wanted me to have a childhood,” he finishes, voice dry as a desert. Then he raises his head, looking at you to gauge your reaction.

You sit for a moment, digesting the information, and then ask, “What about your eyes?”

Hal freezes for a moment, surprised, and then says smoothly, “What about them?”

“You mentioned muscle tissue. You mentioned skin. What about eyes? Why do you wear the shades?”

“Honestly, professor,” he says. “Can’t you recognize an ironic mockery when you see it?”

“I could,” you say, and then smirk at him, just to be infuriating. “But that’s not why you wear them, is it?”

He pauses, and then very slowly shakes his head. Then he reaches up and, carefully, removes the shades.You suck in a breath.

Where Hal’s eyes should be, there are dark orbs with glowing red pupils, surrounded by circuit lines marring his skin. Something about seeing those clearly synthetic eyes in an otherwise human face makes your skin crawl and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. You almost recoil from the sheer  _ wrongness  _ of it.

With the otherness of his face, and how different he looks without the pointy shades, it takes you a moment to notice the look on his face. He looks almost dismayed at your reaction, as if he expected something else. Something better. And then the expression disappears, and he puts the shades back on. “Your turn.”

_ My turn for… oh.  _ “You want me to take off my shades?”

“Yes.”

“And if I don’t?”

“If you don’t, nothing happens, except that I decide that you don’t share the trust I have in you.”

You stare at him, sure your jaw is hanging open. The kid trusts you? And then you mentally smack yourself for it. Of course he does. After all, he could have chosen not to say anything. He could have left you in the dark, kept his shades on. He could have yanked his power cord from the wall and run. But he didn’t. So you reach up and take your shades off, looking Hal straight in the eye. “Happy now?”

For a moment, his face remains blank and neutral. And then Hal smiles, a real grin this time. “Of course. After all, we’re even now.”

“Great.” You slip your shades on, grateful to once again have the barrier between you and the rest of the world. Hal’s still looking at you with that smile on his face, and you shiver, realizing acutely that he’s now one of the only people to ever see your eyes. The other is your bro.

Shaking your head to clear the memory of him (the brother you idolized, who let you down), you manage a half-smile back at Hal.  _ Yeah, kid. We’re even now. _

He nods in satisfaction, and then does the unbelievable. “Thank you.”

You raise your eyebrows at that, opening your mouth to respond, but as you do, the door to the nurse’s office opens. A look of panic appears on Hal’s face and he yanks his power cord out of the wall, wincing as it recoils back into the panel on his neck, which slides shut behind it. Half a second after the panel shuts, Nurse Maryam rounds the corner, her jade-green heels clacking efficiently on the floor as she walks. “Is everything all right, Mr. Strider?” she asks you, glancing from you to Hal and back again.

You clear your throat. “I believe so. Hal here,” you gesture at him, “fell over in class. Probably low blood sugar. You weren’t present, so I decided to stay here with him, make sure nothing bad happened.” You hope you don’t sound guilty.

Maryam raises a perfectly plucked eyebrow at you. “I appreciate you taking an interest in the health of our students, professor. But I would have appreciated it even more if you had attempted to contact me. Fainting can be very serious.”

You nod. “Forgive me, nurse. I don’t seem to deal well with emergencies.” On the cot, Hal snorts with barely-contained laughter, and you resist the urge to turn and glare at him.

She gives you a lipstick-red smile. “It can be forgiven. But I believe, Mr. Strider, that you have a class to return to?” You nod and hastily stand from your chair, retreating towards the exit. As you close the door, you catch one last glimpse of Hal, leaning back against the wall, one corner of his mouth turned up slightly. Walking back towards your classroom, you sigh and sweep your bangs out of your eyes. So the troublemaker in your class is a robot.  _ Well,  _ you think, smiling grimly,  _ parent-teacher nights with Ms. Lalonde are going to be somewhat more awkward now. _


	2. Chapter 2

You’ve finished up classes for the day and started packing up when Hal comes back into the classroom, looking aggravated. He flops down at one of the desks. “Thanks for that low blood sugar comment, professor. Nurse Maryam’s been trying to get me to eat things all day. Never mind that I don’t have a working gastrointestinal system.”

“So how’d you finally get out?” you ask, shutting the laptop and putting it into your bag.

“Told her I didn’t like eating while people were around, so she left the room. Then I threw the stuff she gave me out the window and passed it off like I had eaten something.”

You raise an eyebrow. “And she fell for your cunning plot?”

“Of course she did. After all, there’s a 100% chance that I’m completely brilliant and the plan was amazing.”

“Or so you say.” You pause in cleaning to look up at Hal, giving him an ironic half-smile for good measure.

“Hey,” he says, picking himself up from the chair and walking over to your desk. “Laugh all you want, but you can’t deny the mathematics of the situation.”

“I can’t?” you ask, feigning surprise. “Well, there go my plans for the evening.” Hal doesn’t say anything to that, and you sigh. “Seriously, kid, why are you still here?”

He leans forward, planting his palms on the surface of the desk and looking you in the eyes. “There’s… something I need to tell you.”

“And what would that be?”

Hal smirks at you. “I’m bringing you home to mother.”

You lean backwards, lacing your fingers behind your head. “You know, I’m really not that kind of guy.”

“Oh, I’m aware,” he says, a mischievous smile growing on his face. “But Roxy isn’t. She wants to meet you, make sure you’re a trustworthy individual and won’t sell me to government agents.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Didn’t know government agents were short on snarky assholes. What price did you say you’d go for again?”

“Do I get extra credit if I pretend your jokes are funny?”

“Not in the slightest,” you say, pulling yourself out of the chair and slinging your bag over your shoulder. You head for the door, pausing only to look back at Hal, who is still standing by your desk. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

* * *

The Lalonde residence looks more like an industrial compound than a house, and you hesitate before pulling into the driveway, sure Hal took you to the wrong place by accident. But the kid’s a walking GPS, complete with directions given in a dispassionate female voice, and as soon as you park, he hops out of the car and walks towards the door of the building. When you don’t follow, he pauses and looks back at you, his expression questioning. You hastily unbuckle your seatbelt and get out of the car, hurrying to catch up. He nods when you do, turning back to the house.

“I’m going to assume, professor, that your hesitance was related to the .... _ unorthodox  _ appearance of the house rather than anything else.”

You blink, because yeah, he’s spot on- you’d been wondering how much of the house was a laboratory and how much was an actual living space. But you can’t let Hal know that, so you shake your head. “Actually, it was related to me enjoying the few seconds of peace and quiet I had with you out of the car.”

“You know, if you wanted me to be quiet so much, you could have asked on the drive over. I would have gotten a huge kick out of watching you get horrifically lost.”

“You know,” you say, raising your eyebrows, “there are such things as maps.”

Hal snorts and shakes his head. “God, you are old.” And he opens the door to the house, motioning you inside.

The first thing you notice upon entering are the wizards. There are wizards everywhere- shitty wizard art in expensive frames along the walls, wizard figurines sitting on tables and counters, and the pièce de résistance, a huge granite wizard statue sitting in the middle of the room, staring down with a magnificent bearded face. Looking at the number of wizards in the room, you suddenly understand where the inspiration for Rose’s creative writing projects came from.

While you’re still overwhelmed by the sheer volume of bearded magical men, Hal enters the house and shuts the door behind him. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

“I think this is the second most ironic thing I’ve ever seen,” you say, your voice hushed.

He looks at you, amused. “Only the second?”

“You should see my apartment.” The split second after the words leave your mouth, you wish you could stuff them back down your throat. You don’t trust Hal not to take them the wrong way, and sure enough, he raises an eyebrow at you. 

“I think it’s a bit early for that, don’t you?”

“Wow,” you say, trying to cover your embarrassment, “even with all your computing power, you still can’t figure out that that’s not even close to what I meant.”

“You know, professor,” he says, “you can’t tell, but I’m rolling my eyes right now.”

Before you can respond, there are footsteps down the hallway, and a woman walks into the room. She looks to be about ten years older than you, with shoulder-length blonde hair that flips out at the ends, and you recognize her immediately from previous meetings- Roxy Lalonde, mother of the three most difficult students you’ve ever had. She walks over to you both, her face kept carefully neutral, and addresses Hal. “You OK, kiddo?” 

He nods, sighing. “Yes, mom, I’m fine.” 

Roxy looks relieved. “Good, that’s good.” She turns to you next. “I guess I owe you a thank you, Mr. Strider, for helping my son.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” you say.  _ After all,  _ you think,  _ I did discover your family’s greatest secret. _

* * *

You’re curious about the lab where Hal was made, so Roxy leads you to it, far down into the basement of the gigantic house, Hal following you both down the stairs. The room you enter is huge and dark, full of bubbling green liquids in test tubes and mutated cat bodies frozen in cubes of ice and (if you look closely) more wizard figurines standing guard over the experiments, and you stand transfixed at the entryway for a moment before Hal prods you in the back and you have to move. You step into the room and glance around, taking it all in. Beside you, Roxy smiles. “It’s a little much to take in all at once, huh?”

You nod. “Yeah, it’s… a step up from the labs at school.”

She laughs at your comment and then turns back to the room, calling out. “Rosie! I know you’re down here, so come and meet our guest!”

From behind a piece of equipment that you honestly couldn’t identify if you tried, a girl steps out- Rose Lalonde, the oldest of the Lalonde children. She and her brother were both brilliant students, but they were a nightmare to have in class. Rose’s densely-written wizard prose took up half your grading time, and the comics Dave drew on his test papers were ironic on a scale you wish you could have admired from farther away. Much, much farther away. As she walks over to you, though, she sighs dramatically. “Mother, I did not take a gap year so I could greet my old teachers.”

“I know you didn’t, sweetie, but here you are, so you’re going to be a good host and greet Mr. Strider anyways,” Roxy says, crossing her arms over her chest. From behind you, Hal pipes up as well. 

“Yeah, big sister. Wouldn’t want to make the professor here feel unwelcome.” He saunters forwards, and you see the smug expression on his face out of the corner of your eye. Apparently he gets as much of a kick out of snarking to his older siblings as he does from doing it to you. 

With a heavy, put-upon sigh, like,  _ See what I have to put up with? _ Rose turns to you and drops a sarcastic curtsy. “Welcome to our humble abode, Professor Strider. Could I get you something to drink?” She smiles humorlessly. “We have hydrogen peroxide, formaldehyde, sulfuric acid… anything you’d like, really.”

You raise your eyebrows. “As nice as that offer sounds, I’ll pass.”

“A shame. I’d offer to take your coat, of course, just to complete the guest experience, but you don’t seem to have one.”

You give her a half-smile, the corner of your mouth turning up. “What can I say? I’m only living on a teacher’s salary.”

Beside you, Hal snaps his fingers. “Finally, your constantly disheveled state of appearance makes sense! That sure is one hell of a mystery no one thought needed solving, but damn if it didn’t get solved anyways.”

You start to answer Hal. “Even with my “disheveled” appearance, I’m still better looking than-” Before you can finish, you remember Rose and Roxy and stutter to a stop in the middle of your sentence.  _ Oh, fuck.  _ Fortunately, your aborted attempt at snark is covered by Roxy scolding her creation.

“Hal, if you don’t stop being rude I will put you in a time-out, see if I don’t.” 

Rose raises her eyebrows at her younger sibling. “This is what happens when you disrespect our guests, brother dearest.”

Looking at Hal, you notice that Roxy must have installed some sort of element in his synthetic skin that makes him blush, because his cheeks flush red with embarrassment. “Fine,” he says finally, his tone sulky. “I apologize for my behavior, professor.”

“You’re forgiven,” you say, because you know that that’s what will infuriate him the most. You smile at him, too, just for good measure, and nearly laugh when his blush deepens.  _ There you go, kid. Am I living up to expectations now? _

“Well, now that that’s settled,” says Roxy, clapping her hands together. “Mr. Strider, would you be so kind as to join us for dinner? I’m making lasagna!” 

You look away from Hal and smile politely at Roxy, considering actually staying for about three seconds. Then you glance at Rose, and the idea dies before it’s even really fully-formed. “Sorry, can’t. There’s some ramen and orange soda waiting for me at home, and I know they’ll feel insulted if I’m not there.” You can almost feel Hal wanting to make a snarky remark about how classy you are, but he doesn’t, possibly out of respect for you and more likely because his mother would probably make good on her threat to put him in time-out. 

Roxy, thankfully, doesn’t pick on your pathetic excuse. Instead she laughs. “OK then, Mr. Strider. I hope you have fun at home!” Unexpectedly, she leans in and gives you a hug. While you’re still trying to process what’s happening (where do you put your hands?), she leans slightly forwards and whispers in your ear. “Hurt my baby, and I’ll mutate you so badly you’ll wish you were dead.” Then she draws back, a smile on her face, and pats Hal on the shoulder. “Honey, why don’t you show Mr. Strider the door?”

Hal rolls his eyes. “Sure.” He beckons to you with a finger and then turns around, walking back towards the stairway you entered the lab from, while you follow, still stunned by Roxy’s threat. 

When you’re both inside the safety of the wizard-covered front hall, you slump slightly with the relief of being away from Hal’s family. Hal, of course, notices. “Wow, professor, I didn’t realize meeting my family was that much of a trial.”

You sigh and shake your head. “Not really, I’m mostly just anticipating not having to hang around you any more today.”

“That’s cold, even for you,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “What, was laying out my deepest and most troubling secret for you not enough? Tell me, professor, what do I have to do to get you to like me?” He reaches out to you dramatically, and you take a step backwards, away from his hands. 

“I’ll leave that for you to find out. After all, a guy is allowed some secrets.” You smirk at Hal before leaving, shutting the door quietly behind you. As you walk back to your car in the post-sunset greyness, you’re careful not to look back. 

* * *

That night, you dream of circuits and black-and-red eyes and a pair of broken sunglasses, lying abandoned on the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes that really have no importance to the story:
> 
> Rose and Dave are twins. They're both 19. They were adopted by Roxy when they were 9 and when she was Dirk's age (28), and they've been with her for 10 years now.
> 
> Dave went off to college when he graduated, but Rose took a gap year to "intern" at Roxy's lab. Dave teases her sometimes about how he's going to get his degree before she does, but she says that he's being silly: she already has a PhD in annoying their mother.
> 
> Roxy used to be an alcoholic, back when she was very young, but she stopped drinking a couple of years before she adopted Rose and Dave. She thanks god she did, because she'd never want her children growing up in an environment like that.
> 
> Dirk doesn't eat ramen noodles and orange soda because he doesn't have a lot of money; he eats them because some part of him never left college, and also because every time he tries to cook the fire alarm goes off and he's really tired of that noise.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day, you wake up groggy and feeling like your eyelids had up until recently been superglued shut. You sit in bed for a minute, trying to reconcile the events that happened yesterday with the rest of your reality. _Hal Lalonde is a robot._ As you get out of bed and get ready to go to work, you repeat this over and over in your head, trying to make yourself accept it, but it doesn’t really sink in until you get to school, when Hal, like always, shows up in your classroom early and sets up his stuff.

“Hey, professor,” he says, and the sound of his voice as he calls you “professor”- not mocking or sarcastic, like it always was before, but very slightly amused, as if you and he share a secret- causes a click in your mind as everything snaps into place. _Hal Lalonde is a robot,_ you think, and this time you really believe it.

“Good morning, Hal,” you say, keeping your tone as neutral as you possibly can while looking him directly in the eyes. He smirks at you, and it occurs to you that you might not have entirely succeeded. But it’s too late already, your other students are entering the classroom, and you sigh and start the lesson, all too aware of the smug look on Hal’s face as you do.

* * *

He stays after class again, pulling a chair up to your desk and leaning his elbows on it. “So professor, I have a question.”

You glance upwards as you rifle through your papers to find your lesson plan for the next class. “What is it this time?”

He smirks at you. “What could I possibly do for extra-credit?”

You can’t help yourself- you laugh. “Hal, you have an A+ in this class, and I suspect it’s the same in all your other classes. If there was any grade higher than an A+, you’d have that. You don’t need extra-credit.”

“Then I guess you’d say no to after-school tutoring as well?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.

“Don’t be so quick to assume.” You find the lesson plan and skim through it. “I’d never realized studying held that much of your interest, though. I guess it explains some of the stains on the textbooks.”

“Really? I’d assumed that was you. Love of learning gone awry, or some such thing.”

You roll your eyes. “I think they’d fire me for that, Hal.”

“Maybe, maybe not. After all, they really are scraping the bottom of the barrel for educators, as evidenced by the fact that you were employed in the first place.”

The bell rings, and you startle slightly, flinching. Regaining your composure, you turn back to your bag, pulling out your laptop and setting it on the table. “It’s time for you to stop harping on how incompetent I am and get to your next class, kid.”

Hal stands and replaces his chair back behind one of the desks. “Sure thing, professor. I assume we’ll be meeting here after school?”

Before you can respond, students file into the classroom. Hal gives you one last smile, and then he leaves, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and walking out. You stare after him for a moment, just a moment, before turning to your class.  

* * *

 

When Hal shows up in your classroom after school, he practically collapses into a chair, looking exhausted. “Uggggh,” he moans, flopping a hand dramatically over his eyes.

You snort, watching him. “What is it this time? Is being, what did you say, “physically and mentally superior” getting to you?”

“Yes, exactly. I’m bored. I have enough computing power to make every supercomputer in the world cry for its mommy, and I’m going to highschool, and I’m _bored._ Send for the fire department, because if I have to endure much more of this torture I’ll self-destruct in a fiery conflagration that will take out the entire school with it.”

“Yeah, right,” you say, crossing your arms over your chest. “I know you, Hal. You’re far too self-centered to destroy yourself.”

“Do you know me?” Hal sits up suddenly, abruptly. “Do you really know me, professor?”

You consider his question for a second. Hal’s a student in your class and attends regularly, but yesterday was really the first day you’d really had a conversation with him outside of the usual “Good job on the homework.” And in the course of one day, you discovered that he isn’t human, that he’s worlds smarter than anyone you’ve ever met, and that, for some inexplicable reason, he trusts you. Before, you would have said that he was annoying, but nothing special. Now his behavior, his arrogance, even his compulsion to answer your questions with snark and sarcasm, it all takes on a new tone. In a way, you just met Hal yesterday. You’re just starting to learn about him. “No,” you say. “I don’t think I know you at all.”

To your surprise, Hal smiles. “At least you admit it. For the record, I don’t know you, either. Though maybe I’d like to.”

You draw back slightly, surprised, even though you probably shouldn’t be. Hal’s made it clear that he, for some reason or another, finds you interesting. You hadn’t, however, anticipated him wanting to get to know you. But… _What the hell._ “What do you want to know?”

He raises an eyebrow at you. “It seems you’re looking to me to start this conversation. All right, then. How’d you decide that what you really wanted to do was corrupt the minds of the youths of tomorrow?”

“If you’re asking me why I became a teacher, it was mostly because of a series of events outside of my control. Also, because I had to declare a major, and education seemed as good as anything.”

“So, basically you just sort of ended up here and you have no idea how. You, professor, are truly an inspiration to us all.” Hal laughs briefly. “I honestly don’t know what I expected from you.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh all you want. Let’s hear what _you_ have planned for the future.”

To your surprise, Hal’s face goes blank, and he tilts his head oddly, staring off into space. When he finally speaks, his voice is pensive. “I don’t know. I’ve applied to colleges, and I’m sure I’ll be accepted to all my top choices. But as for what I want to do with my life…” he trails off, shaking his head. “I honestly don’t know.”

You wince, remembering the uncertainty of your own high school days. You know _exactly_ how he feels. “Don’t sweat it, kid. I’m sure you’ll grow up just fine.”

Hal gives you a half-smile, finally focusing on your face. “Thanks. Now, it’s my turn again to ask a question, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t realize we were taking turns.” You lean back in your chair, barely resisting the urge to put your feet on the desk. Then you think _Why not?_ and plop your heels up among the papers still on the desk, relishing the barely-concealed look of surprise on Hal’s face. He recovers quickly enough, though.

“Of course we’re taking turns, professor. Did you think we were just having a conversation in the normal style of two people talking? Because if so… well, you’re probably used to being wrong by now, so it shouldn’t be that much of a blow.”

“If it’s your turn, go ahead and ask instead of spending all this extra time talking and stalling,” you say, crossing your legs so that they match your arms.

Hal sits back in his chair. “Fine, fine.” He spends a moment considering, and then leans forwards and asks, quietly, “Yesterday, you said you didn’t have a mother. What happened?”

You’re startled by how serious and forward the question is, and you think for a moment, trying to figure out how to answer without going too deep into your childhood. Finally, you speak. “Never knew my parents. They died when I was little. My brother raised me until I turned 18, then left overnight. Guess he decided I didn’t need him any more.” Then you lean your head back, pointedly looking at the ceiling instead of at Hal.

There’s a moment in which his hesitance is almost palpable, and you’re prepared to hear more of the same sympathy you’ve heard over and over for ten years- “I’m sorry for your loss,” maybe. Or maybe he’ll ask for more information, and you’ll be forced to explain. But no, it’s Hal, and he doesn’t say any of that, thank god. Just, “Your turn to ask a question,” and you let out a sigh of relief. Before you can ask anything, though, the door flies open and Nepeta Leijon, one of your students, steps into the classroom.

“Professor, can you read my essay and tell me- oh,” she says, catching sight of Hal and you with your feet on the desk. You swing your legs down hastily, ignoring the papers that flutter down with them. _Oh, fuck._ “Am I interrupting something?” she asks, sounding hesitant. You see her take a step backwards, and hastily clear your throat.

“Uh, no. After-school tutoring, that’s all.” You motion to your desk. “Leave your paper here and I’ll take a look at it tonight, OK?” She nods and gently sets the papers down before absconding out the door. She’s barely left when Hal bursts out laughing.

“She… she looked so alarmed… oh my god,” he gasps, sinking down in his chair involuntarily. You look at him, practically falling on the floor with laughter, and you can’t help it- you start laughing, too. You both laugh together until your stomachs hurt, and when you finally stop, it’s only because you’ve run out of breath. Hal keeps laughing for a bit longer, because he doesn’t need to breathe, but eventually his laughs putter out as well, and there’s silence. It’s into this silence that he says, “I should go. Mom’s probably waiting for me in the parking lot.”

You nod, standing. “Yeah, wouldn’t want to keep her waiting. That,” you say, thinking about what would happen if Roxy decided you meant harm to her son by keeping him after school, “would be bad.”

Hal stands as well, grabbing his backpack off the ground. “Why professor, are you scared of mommy dearest?” he says, back in the familiar teasing, mocking tone you know, and you nod.

“Hell yeah I am. Have you _met_ your mother?” Hal opens his mouth to answer (and presumably to snark at you more), when you hold up a hand and interrupt. “You know what, I just discovered that I don’t actually care. Go.” You point to the door. Hal smiles and obeys, opening the door and slipping through.

“See you tomorrow, professor,” he calls, and the door clicks shut.

You find, with a jolt of surprise, that you’re looking forwards to it.


	4. Chapter 4

Hal doesn’t come to school tomorrow.

_He’s not sick,_ you think, as your first class packs up and leaves. He can’t be sick, physically can’t, like he can’t eat. The only possibility you can come up with is that he skipped class that day to go do whatever delinquent teenage androids do.

Even though he’s never missed a day of class before.

It scares you, you realize. You’re worried about Hal, like you were worried about him when he collapsed in your class just a couple of days ago, but more so now that you know more about him. You don’t want him to get hurt.

When the school day ends, you pack up and go out to the parking lot, intent on driving over to the Lalonde residence and asking them what the fuck is going on with Hal. Before you can walk to your car, though, someone driving a long, sleek black car pulls up in front of you and stops, blocking your path. The driver’s side window rolls down, and you can see Roxy Lalonde looking out at you, her eyes glinting angrily from a face otherwise frozen in an expression of deliberate neutrality. When she speaks, her voice is quiet, but all the more dangerous for it.

“Get in the car, Mr. Strider.”

You get in the car.

On the inside, the car is full of people. In the passenger’s seat up front, you see Rose Lalonde, who appears to be knitting something purple and tentacled. She glances at you briefly, but is silent. Next to you in the backseat is her twin brother, Dave Lalonde. He’s supposed to be off at college right now, but apparently he didn’t get the memo, seeing as right now he’s sitting in the backseat with you, picking at the skin around his nails and muttering to himself under his breath. Rap lyrics, you think, or some kind of monologue. _All the Lalondes are here_ _except Hal._ And then you swallow nervously.

Roxy drives through a route you took only two days ago- she heads for the Lalonde house. When you get there, she kills the engine, unbuckles her seatbelt, and twists around to look at you, her eyes narrowing. You notice Rose and Dave looking at you as well, solemnly staring like funeralgoers. You have to force yourself not to scoot away from their gazes.

“Now, Mr. Strider,” Roxy says, her voice flat and carefully expressionless. “We can get down to business.” And her face twists as she bares her teeth in rage. “ _Where is my son?!_ ”

You flinch away from her biting tone, trying to process the words. _She thinks I know where Hal is?_ you wonder desperately. “I don’t know,” you say, doing your best to keep your voice even. A faint wobble in your voice betrays you, and you close your eyes and take a deep breath. “I don’t know.” Roxy opens her mouth to respond and you cut her off, speaking quickly just in case she’s ready to mutate you. “He wasn’t at school today, and he never misses school. And-” You almost tell Roxy that he told you he’d be there for after-school tutoring today, but think the better of it at the last moment. “I was just going to drive over here and ask what happened to him.” For a second, as she scowls at you, you think you’re screwed. Then Dave speaks up.

“Mom, call it a hunch, but I think he’s telling the truth,” he says, looking at Roxy behind his shades. “I mean, think about it, why would he kidnap Hal and then go to school and teach like normal, leaving Hal alone all day when he could possibly escape? It just doesn’t make sense. Look, if I had Hal all helpless and gagged with duct tape and I was about to tell him my evil plan, complete with showing him all the megadeath levers like a Bond villain, I’d call in sick to work and stay with my captive to make sure he didn’t somehow escape or get discovered or whatever.”

“I never thought I’d say this,” says Rose, piping up from the passenger seat, “but I agree with my brother. He doesn’t have any motive to steal Hal away or the means to do so, and his behavior doesn’t make sense if we assume he had something to do with Hal’s disappearance. I think we must conclude that he’s innocent.”

Roxy processes this for a moment, and then nods. Her face relaxes into an expression of sadness, rather than rage, and before she can turn away, you see a single tear run down her face. “Okay,” she says, and her voice is still quiet, but incalculably sad and afraid now, afraid for her son. “Okay. Mr. Strider, I apologize for my behavior. I thought- I thought you had- oh, my Hal,” she says, and sobs quietly. “My baby boy.” Dave and Rose exchange a glance, and then Dave reaches over and gently pats his mother on the shoulder.

“It’ll be okay, mom. We’ll find him.”

“Excuse me,” you say, feeling a little ashamed at interrupting Roxy in her crying. Everyone in the car turns to look at you, and you take a deep breath. “What, exactly, happened? When did Hal disappear?”

Roxy makes a quiet gulping noise and tries visibly to put herself back together. She pulls a tissue out of one of the pockets in her dress and dabs at her eyes. “He was gone when I went up to tell him breakfast was ready. He could have just left on his own, but his room was messy, and Hal- his room’s messiness is always ironic, and organized, in its own way. This was genuinely messy, like a tornado had picked up things and thrown them around. It wasn’t like my son at all. And,” she says, in a voice that is almost a whisper, “I found blood. Hal can’t bleed.”

“Okay,” you say, filing away this information and trying to set aside the wave of fear for Hal that sweeps across you. “Next question. Why did you think it was me?”

“Surely you’re not that dense,” says Rose. “We, the ones sitting in the car right now, are the only people who know who and _what_ Hal truly is, and of these people you are the only one who isn’t part of the family. Assuming, therefore, that it was you who abducted my little brother was a perfectly logical step.”

Your first reaction is anger, burning in your chest. How dare she say this, as if you don’t care about Hal at all, how dare- and then you close your eyes and take a deep breath, struggling to calm yourself and look at this with a neutral eye. _I’ve only known him, really known him, for two days, and I’ve only met his family once in a setting that didn’t have to do with school. It’s reasonable that this is what they’d assume. It doesn’t mean their assumption was true, but it was reasonable._ When you open your eyes, you nod at Rose. “Understood. But it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t know where Hal is.”

“No, of course not.”

You sigh, looking around to the rest of the car, to the still-crying Roxy and Dave comforting her awkwardly, and then you hit upon an idea. “Ms. Lalonde,” you say, and she looks up at you, her mascara running. “Does Hal have a GPS tracker?”

She hesitates, thinking, and then nods, her eyes widening in surprise. “Oh, I’m so stupid, I completely forgot I installed it when I built him! Come on,” she says, unclipping her seat belt and swinging open her door, “get out, everyone, it’s time to find Hal!”

* * *

In the lab, Roxy clears off one of the counters, shoving papers onto the floor in her haste to make room. She sets her laptop on the table, sits down, opens it, and begins typing in commands so fast that her fingers blur. “C’mon, c’mon,” you hear her whisper as she types. Finally, a map of North America pops up on the screen, and she sits back. “It’s tracking him, right now. It’ll take a few minutes to load, but then… then we can see where Hal is right now.” She sighs as she watches it. “I hope he’s okay.” _Me, too,_ you think, but do not say.

As you and the Lalondes stare at the screen, rapt, there is a beeping noise from Roxy’s lab coat pocket. She startles, looking guilty, and pulls out her phone. You watch over her shoulder as Roxy clicks on the message that was just sent (from a number her phone marks as “Unknown”). A video box opens on her phone, and you and Roxy gasp, almost in unison. There, tied to a chair and gagged, is Hal.

He stares at the camera blankly, no expression on his face, but you get the impression that if you could see his eyes he’d look desperate and angry and terrified. Hal’s posture is rigid, as if he can’t let himself relax for even a second, and he’s wearing his usual clothing- jeans, a t-shirt. You notice numbly that this one has a picture of a hat on it. His hair’s a mess, but doesn’t look like he’s been hurt. _Then again, he’s a robot. He doesn’t bleed or bruise._ For all you know, they could have been hurting him all day, and the thought makes you want to grab whoever’s keeping him there and snap their neck. No one does this to your students. No one.

Behind him, after the initial shock, you notice a girl. You take in the details of her appearance, memorizing each one, because the more you know about Hal’s captors, the more you know about what’s happening to him. She looks to be about seventeen, wearing a green dress and red lipstick, and her black hair is short except for two long, trailing locks in front. She’s leaning against the wall casually, looking away from Hal and the camera, as if she can’t stand the sight. A strip of tape over her nose and two trails of dried blood coming from her nostrils tell you that her nose has been recently broken, and you smile slightly. At least Hal got one good punch in.

Next to you, Dave and Rose crowd in closer to see what’s happening, and you hear Dave whisper “Oh, _shit,”_ as he takes in the sight of his little brother. Rose says nothing, but the anger on her face makes it perfectly clear that whoever did this to Hal is going to pay, preferably in blood. Roxy doesn’t say anything either, but her white-knuckled grip on the phone speaks for her. She wouldn’t stop her daughter from killing Hal’s abductor. She’d help.

On-screen, a man steps into the picture, wearing a white suit over a green shirt and bowtie. His head is entirely covered by a white motorcycle helmet with a reflective visor. You can’t see his face. He walks over to Hal and rests a hand on his shoulder, and Roxy stiffens, swearing at the man under her breath. “Fuck you, let go of my son, you bastard-”

“Hello, Miss Lalonde,” says the man. His voice is smooth and deep, but he speaks haltingly, pausing at odd moments. He tilts his head, and his visor catches the light for a moment, glinting. “I would ask,” he continues, “if I could address you by your first name, but this is just a recording, after all. If it were live, however, I know what you would say to that. So Miss Lalonde it will be, for now.” He pauses for a moment, as if considering what to say next. “As you can see, I have your son with me. I will make you an offer for his freedom. This offer is as follows: come to me, alone and unarmed, and I will let him go. Your talents would be valuable for my current pursuits, and quite frankly I’d be delighted to have the founder of Skaianet Labs as a… let’s say, as a guest.”

_Founder?_ you wonder, looking from the screen to Roxy. You thought she was only an employee, but… you slap yourself mentally. Anyone with the capability to make a robot as advanced as Hal is no mere employee.

The man in the motorcycle helmet continues. “However, if you come to me with others, or with weapons, things will begin to get very unpleasant for him indeed. You have forty-eight hours to make a decision. I trust you will make the right one. A mother will do whatever is best for her children, after all. Until then, I will care for your son as if he was my own, and he will remain unharmed. No one could accuse me of not being an excellent host.” And the video screen goes dark, shutting off.

In the silence following the video message, Roxy carefully, very carefully, sets the phone down on the table (you get the impression that she’s trying very hard not to shatter it on the ground as she does) and turns to you, Rose, and Dave. “Okay,” she says, in the same voice she addressed you with in the school parking lot, but directed now at Hal’s captors. “What now?”

Dave shakes his head and opens his mouth to begin talking, but Rose cuts him off. “As far as I can see, we don’t have very many advantages at this point in time, but there are two bits of good luck that we have come across.”

“What?” you ask, crossing your arms over your chest. “All that’s happened is they’ve captured Hal and are using him to blackmail Roxy. There’s nothing good about that at all.”

“Ah, professor, but that’s where you’re wrong. Firstly,” she says, ticking it off on one finger, “it’s obvious that at this point in time they don’t know what Hal is. If they did, they would have realized by now that he’s a far greater asset than our mother would be.”

“And second?”

Rose smiles. “We know where they live.” And she points at the screen over Roxy’s shoulder, on which a red, steadily pulsing dot indicates Hal’s current location.

* * *

Arming yourself for combat seems to happen in a blur, but certain things stand out: Rose’s smile as she presses a button on her pair of knitting needles and demolishes a jar twenty yards away; Roxy, slipping on a shoulder holster and strapping a strange red gun into it, her face grim; Dave, shaking the broken sword in his hand for emphasis as he insists that it just feels right. You, grabbing a katana from the rack, hefting it in your hand and remembering the years of rooftop duels with your bro.

As you look down at your katana, and then across at Rose, Roxy, and Dave, you hope that it’ll be enough.

* * *

Hal’s location is approximately three hours away, relatively close to the Lalonde house. That wouldn’t normally be a problem, but you’re dealing with a deadline here, emphasis on _dead._ Three hours out of forty-eight isn’t a huge percentage, but you already know you’re going to need all the time you can get.

As you’re driving down the highway, something occurs to you, and you sit bolt-upright in your seat. “Shit!”

Roxy glances back at you. “Something wrong, Mr. Strider?” she asks, pressing her foot down on the accelerator and urging the car to go faster.

“Fuck yeah, something’s wrong!” you say, urgency straining your voice. “What if Hal runs out of battery? What are we going to do then? God, they’ll think he’s dead, they’ll probably dump his body somewhere we’ll never find it-”

Roxy cuts you off. “No, they won’t, because Hal won’t run out of battery. Normally, you’d be right- he can run for about twenty four hours consecutively before he runs out of juice, so he’d have about six to eight hours left- but I took some precautions. In other words,” she says, looking at you in the rearview mirror, “we have a portable charger to give him. It’ll buy us some time.” Her voice tightens, as if she’s on the verge of tears. “But if we don’t manage to get him out within the deadline set by his captors, none of that will matter.”

Rose turns towards her mother, surveying her for a second, and then shakes her head. “That,” she says, “Is not going to happen.”

Roxy doesn’t respond for a moment, and you see her knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. When she speaks, her voice is full of venom and determination. “No. Because we’re going to rescue him and _make them pay._ ”

“Hell yeah we are,” is Dave’s input, his voice uncharacteristically cold. You can’t see his eyes behind his shades, but the set of his mouth and the way his hands are balled into fists tells you everything you need to know. Rose, sitting in the front, twists around to look at her brother, her face solemn. He looks back at her, his face as expressionless as stone, and she nods to him before turning to face the front again.

Roxy drives without stopping, going far faster than the speed limit, going as fast as she possibly can without endangering your lives. She drives, and drives, and drives, until finally, on a dirt road surrounded by forest, she stops. You take a look around and see nothing but trees.

“This is where Hal is?” you ask, confused. “There’s nothing here.”

“I know, Mr. Strider,” says Roxy, looking at you in the rearview mirror. “But unless we want to drive up to the front door and knock, not being noticed is our best course of action. Which means we stop here and walk to rest of the way to Hal’s destination.”

“And where would that be?”

“About half a mile away,” says Roxy, unbuckling and stepping out of the car with the GPS in one hand and a backpack slung over her shoulder. She doesn’t glance back as she starts to stride down the path.

After a few seconds, the rest of you follow her.

* * *

The walk to where Hal is doesn’t take long, but it’s annoying as hell. Roxy goes off the road almost immediately, stepping into the woods with no attempt to find a path, which leaves you, Rose, and Dave stumbling after her through the undergrowth. Plants seem to grab at your feet and threaten to trip you, and a couple of times you almost fall, only saving yourself by grabbing desperately at nearby trees. Once, Dave really does fall, and has to be hauled to his feet by you and Rose before you can follow Roxy. Roxy herself walks as if the forest doesn’t bother her. She moves briskly, completely ignoring the brush tangling around her feet and ankles, and you have to hurry to keep pace.

Finally, after about a half an hour of walking through the woods, you see light between the trees in front of you, and Roxy stops. “Here it is.” You come up beside her and peer through the trees, looking through them at what lies beyond. It’s a lawn, immaculate and green, leading up to a Victorian-looking mansion painted in different shades of the same color. It’s huge and garish, and you hate it immediately. But you’re here, finally- one step closer to rescuing Hal.

Behind you, Rose and Dave walk up to the tree line, stopping to look at the mansion. Dave swears under his breath. “How are we going to find Hal in that place? It must have more rooms than the fucking White House. Looking for him will be like trying to find a needle in a bright green, house-shaped haystack.”

He has a point, but you’ll be damned if you just leave it at that. You turn to him. "Shit, you think we're not badass at finding needles in bright green, house-shaped haystacks? You're hurting my heart, Lalonde." Dave snorts, and you continue, lowering your voice, gentling it. “We’re going to get him out of there, Dave.” He nods, but looks unconvinced. You don’t blame him.

You shift your focus to Rose, who stares out at the house, her eyebrows drawn together in a look of pensive concentration. After a moment, though, her face clears and she smiles slightly, her mouth quirking upwards. It’s not a nice smile.

Under her breath, you hear her say “Welcome to the party, motherfuckers.” 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone reading: as of today I've officially written the end of this fic. It probably won't be posted for a while (there's still a lot of editing for me to do) but it's done and, while not written in stone, it's most likely not going to change very much. 
> 
> This is the longest fic I've ever finished, and the experience of writing it was amazing. Thanks to all you guys for your comments and kudos, you kept me going. I hope you all enjoy how the story ends!

You have five hours at the most to get the charger to Hal, and with each minute that ticks by on the clock, the knot in your stomach tightens and the sun goes down a little further. You’re all making yourselves useful in every way you can- Roxy sits on the forest floor, tapping away on her laptop and humming to herself as she hacks through the mansion’s defenses, and Rose observes the house and makes notes in her journal on the physical structure and all visible entrances and exits. You and Dave have been relegated to organization and packing for your mission, picking out the essentials from the bag Roxy brought, sorting through and cataloging things. It’s busywork, a job designed to keep you from bothering Rose and Roxy while they do the important stuff, and you feel increasingly useless as you look at some of the items you’re working with- the charger, a spare laptop, wire cutters. You have an urge to either laugh or cry at how ridiculous and terrifying this situation is, but instead you pick up the cutters and set them to your left. Mostly, you wait, in the deepening dusk.

After who knows how long (could have been twenty minutes, could have been an hour), Roxy hits a key on her keyboard definitively. “Gotcha,” she says, a grin on her face. Immediately, you all turn to her, moving over to crowd around her and look over her shoulder at the screen. She looks up at you all in turn, smiling triumphantly. “I hacked into the security- alarms, cams, everything.” And sure enough, she clicks to open a window and the security feeds from all over the house are displayed, right on her computer.

Black-and-white video show all the rooms in the house, which is huge and mostly empty. As Roxy clicks through the feeds, something catches your eye, and you motion for her to stop. It’s a feed of a living room, with the girl from the video sitting in an armchair and reading. As you watch, the man in the motorcycle helmet enters the room. There’s no sound and you can’t see his lips moving through the visor, but he must have said something, because almost immediately the girl jumps up and throws her book at him, her mouth open and face contorted in anger, clearly screaming. The man in the helmet dodges the book neatly, picks up a broom lying next to the bookshelf, and goes to smack her with it, but she wrenches it out of his grasp and turns it back on him, trying in vain to beat him with the handle. But before she can land a single hit, the man in the motorcycle helmet grabs the broom neatly and pulls it out of the girl’s hands, seemingly with no trouble at all. In one smooth motion, he snaps it in half and hits the girl with the bristle-covered end, hard enough to knock her down onto the floor, two fresh trails of blood coming from her already-broken nose. You flinch, hard. You had your share fair of fights with your bro when you were younger, sure, but those were always training, nothing serious. You always knew you wouldn’t get hurt. _This, though_ ? you think, watching the girl on the screen look up at the man in the motorcycle helmet with hate-filled eyes. _This is fucked up._

Beside you there is a sharp intake of breath from Dave. When you look at the Lalonde twins, he’s shaking (in anger or fear or something else entirely you can’t tell), and Rose, with her hand on his shoulder, looks vaguely sick to her stomach. When Dave speaks next, his words are clipped and precise and cold, sounding far more like his sister than you’d ever heard him before. “We have to get Hal out of there.”

Roxy look at you and at her children, her eyes wide and scared. The unspoken question seems to float between the four of you- If this is how this man treats the people working with him, then what would he do to Hal, if Hal displeased him? What would he do to Hal if he found out about what Roxy was doing? Should you all just give up? And then Roxy takes a deep breath and turns back to her computer, her back straight and her fingers flashing over the keyboard. The indication is clear. You’re not giving up. Not yet. Not until Hal comes out of that house alive and unharmed, or until- you cut off that thought off before it can finish, and turn back to watching Roxy.

Roxy’s started taking Rose’s notes and comparing them to the camera feeds, slowly building a map of the inside of the building. She flips through the feeds, muttering to herself. “So if this is a side door that leads to this room… and this room leads here…. Then….” As she scribbles and types, you take your phone out of your pocket and check the time. Four hours left. Sighing, you walk away from the Lalondes and go sit with your back against a nearby tree. There’s nothing to be gained by you hanging around. You’d just be a distraction.

* * *

 

You’ve started to slip into a light doze when a noise like a sob, coming from Roxy’s direction, wakes you immediately. You jump to your feet and head over to where she’s sitting to look over her shoulder at the screen, trying to elbow your way past the Lalonde twins, who got there before you. Rose glares, but reluctantly moves aside slightly so you can see. And there, on-screen in black and white, is Hal.

They’ve moved him to a different room, and apparently untied and de-gagged him. He’s lying on his back on the only piece of furniture around, a bed, looking at the ceiling. His hands are flung out to either side of him, one hanging off the edge of the bed and tapping idly at the side of the mattress. As you watch, he raises his head a bit, then pushes himself up into a sitting position. Turning slightly and looking directly at the camera, Hal flips you off, and you have to stifle a laugh. Even after being kidnapped and used for blackmail, he’s still a little shit.

Beside you, Rose snorts, sounding vaguely amused. But when you look at each other, you see the shine of tears in her eyes as well as the faint smile on her face, and know that she’s relieved that for now, at least, her brother is safe. On your other side, Dave’s shoulders slump, some of the tension going out of them. Even Roxy lets out a sigh of relief, before going back to alternating between typing on her computer and drawing in Rose’s notebook, making her diagram more and more complicated. You sit back, looking at the sky. You can’t see it between the trees, but you have a feeling that if you could, you would see the stars.

Five minutes later, there’s a “bing!” from Roxy’s computer, and she turns around, a triumphant smile on her face. “I’m done,” she says, and once again the three of you scramble to see what Roxy has made.

On the spread pages of Rose’s journal, Roxy has drawn a crude diagram of the house in pink pen. The lines are wobbly, but you can clearly tell where one room stops and another room ends, and it’s better than you could do in a million years so you don’t complain. You wait for Roxy to explain, and aren’t surprised when she delivers.

“Here,” she says, pointing at an opening on the perimeter of the map nearest to you, “is the front door. We will not be going through the front door, except in an emergency. And here,” she says, pointing to another opening near the back of the map, “is the back door. This one opens onto a kitchen, and it’s the door we’ll be using. From there, we walk over here.” Roxy points to a zig-zagging line that must represent stairs. “You go up the stairs and then,” she flips to another page, a map of the floor above the first one, and points to a room. ”You go here. It’s where Hal is, and it is locked as fuck.”

“So, you’ve brought some sort of lock-picking device, right?” you ask. You didn’t see one in the backpack, but it’s always possible that Roxy has it stashed away somewhere else. You’re surprised when she shakes her head.

“Yeah, no, I actually totally forgot about lockpicking when packing. Completely. We have no way in at all.” She looks at you, her eyes narrowed slightly and mouth set in a tight line. “Of course I brought a lockpick. The problem is, while it’s definitely enough to get us in when I disable the alarms, is that Hal’s room probably has a fuckton of security measures, way more than the outer perimeter of the house and waaaaaay more than my little tool can handle. Like, okay. Hal’s a robot, and he’s more than that, he’s a robot who happens to be my son. Don’t you think I gave him all sorts of cool shit when I built him? If that lock could be picked at all from the inside, he would have done it and escaped by now. But, apparently, it can’t. And that makes complete sense, because when we look through the eyes of the camera right outside the door of that room…” she turns back and taps a few commands into her computer, then presents it to everyone, “it’s a gigantic safe.”

Taking a look at the black-and-white feed, you can see that it is, indeed, the door of a huge safe. It looks like a combination lock, but gigantic, easily taller than you are, and you feel a little more intimidated and a lot more hopeless than you did a minute ago. Looking around your group, you can only think of two people who would be able to get through that safe: Roxy and Rose. And if you were to narrow that category down to “can open the safe without destroying it”, the tally would go down to zero. None of you can open that door.

“So if none of us can open the safe without blowing it the fuck up and alerting everyone of our presence, what are we going to do? It seems like the plan just completely went up in flames.”

“Yes. Which is why there’s a new plan.” Roxy shuts her laptop and looks you in the eyes. “Blow it the fuck up, give the charger to Hal, and then take him and run like hell.” You swallow, then nod your assent. Roxy continues. “So, we’re going to need two people. One blow-the-fuck-upper, and one person to cover their back when needed. Rose,” she says, and then takes a deep breath, as though it physically pains her to say this, “you’re going in my place as the explosions person because you have the science-powered needle wands. I need to stay here and keep your tracks covered with my digital majykks. Mr. Strider,” she points to you, “you’re going as backup. Dave, you’re with me.” Roxy turns her back to you and re-opens her laptop, leaving the journal open to its diagram pages behind her.

“What? Bullshit,” is the immediate response. Dave springs to his feet. “Hal’s my brother, Rose is my sister, I’m going.” He crosses his arms and juts out his chin defiantly.

You sigh, standing as well. “Yeah, but how good are you at protection? You chose that sword, but can you use it? And if things get bad,” you lean in and lower your voice, “if things get bad and you all end up dying, your mother will lose her entire family. I’m expendable, Rose has to go, and Hal’s already in there. You’re none of those. If shit goes down and I’m in there instead of you, you lose two siblings, your mother loses two children. But you don’t lose your life and your mother doesn’t lose everything. Please, Dave,” you say, your voice hushed. “Let me go instead.”

Dave takes a step backwards, looking a little shocked. He glanes at his sister, then at his mother, typing away at the keyboard, so determined to save Hal. Sounding so regretful to have to send Rose in her place. And then he sighs and sits down next to his mom, facing away from you. “Fine. You go. I’ll wait here.”

“Thank you,” you say to his back. Then you grab the journal from where it’s lying on the ground, bookmark the diagram pages, and walk over to Rose, who is rummaging in the backpack.

“Aha!” she says, and then pulls out a case you hadn’t noticed before in your sorting and the charger. Then, noticing you, she stands and brushes off her pants, shoving both things in her pockets. “Well then. Shall we, Professor Strider?”

You give a short laugh at her commitment to calling you “professor”, then nod. “Yeah. We’re going to carpe the heck out of Hal Lalonde.”

She nods. Then the two of you turn and walk out of the woods and into the clearing.

* * *

Going across the lawn to the back porch of the house is objectively a pretty easy task, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fucking terrifying. The minute you and Rose exit the tree line, you break into a sprint, dashing for the safety of the porch, where you’ll be out of the open. Rose follows suit, running. You know she feels the same anxiety that you do about being so exposed, even for a moment. And then you’ve reached the porch. You and Rose carefully climb the stairs, breathing heavily, hunched over so as to stay out of the line of the windows. You flatten yourself to the wall next to the door, and Rose kneels in front of the door, pulling the case out of her pocket and opening it to reveal lock-picking tools. She picks one up and goes to work on the lock, then pauses, takes it out, and turns the knob. The door glides open, silently. You raise your eyebrows at her and whisper. “That easy to pick the lock?”

She shakes her head, putting the lockpick back into its case and closing it, and answers in a hushed voice. “It was already open.” Then she stands up, and you and Rose enter the world’s ugliest mansion.

* * *

If you thought the green on the outside was overwhelming, it’s nothing compared to the inside. Everywhere you look, there’s more green. The walls are green, the ceiling and the floor are green and so is all the kitchenware (Roxy seems to have been right about what the back door opened on to). Even the clocks covering the walls and filling the rooms with a cacophony of ticking are all green. You look around, then glance back at Rose and raise your eyebrows. She shrugs. “Can’t account for some people’s tastes,” she whispers. You shrug, and then open up the journal you’re carrying to the bookmarked pages, the ones Roxy diagrammed on. You glance at the drawing for a moment, and then exit the kitchen into a hallway. After a moment, you hear Rose following. You’re thankful for the carpet now under your feet, muffling your footsteps. If you’re quiet, it’s less likely that you’ll be found.

You follow the path to the stairs, taking lefts and rights through the house, increasingly grateful for the map. This place is a fucking maze. If you had gone in here unprepared, you would never have been able to leave, much less rescue Hal. But as is…. You stop at the foot of the stairs and motion for Rose to go in front of you. “Ladies first,” you whisper.

She looks at you flatly. “As much as I respect your dedication to tradition, I’d rather follow the self-appointed navigator,” she responds quietly.

You think about it for a moment, then shrug. “Can’t argue with that logic.” You walk up the stairs, Rose just a step behind.

When you get to the top, you turn left and stop. At the end of the hall, set into the wall, is the safe door you had seen from the camera feed. You realize as soon as you see it that you underestimated its size- it’s huge, much taller than you are and clearly more massive.The door to the room Hal’s being kept in. You hurry down the hall, trying to walk as quickly as you can while still being silent. Rose outpaces you, pushing you aside and striding to the safe, not even paying attention to subtlety any more. You wince at the noise her footsteps make, but follow and stand next to her, looking up at the safe.

“Got any plans for making this thing explode?”

“Many. However, at the moment those are not the plans I am considering. I’m pondering if there remains any way to go back to plan A, and open this safe without alerting anyone of our presence. However, since I have no clue as to how to open even the simplest of combination locks without actually having the combination, I suspect not. And even if you happen to have that knowledge, professor, it would only be useful if you could also move things many times your size and weight. Can you do those things?” You shake your head, and she nods. “I thought as such. Now,” she says, pulling out her needle wands and pointing them at the safe, “you might want to duck.”

As Rose’s finger moves to press the button on her needles that will release a destructive burst of light and energy, you hear the quiet rasp of a laugh behind you.

You and Rose turn as one, you unsheathing your katana and she aiming directly at the new target, who leans against the wall casually, watching you with amusement. At the sight of your weapons, the dark-haired, bloody-nosed girl from the video raises an eyebrow. “Relax,” she says, a slight hint of a Japanese accent in her voice. “If I wanted to kill you, you would already be dead.” One of her eyes is blackened, most likely from the assault you saw earlier on the camera, but her voice is smug and relaxed, almost lazy.

“So what do you want?” you ask, keeping your katana leveled at her.

One corner of her mouth twitches upwards. “I wanted to say that it is a retina scanner disguised as a combination lock. Also, that you are both idiots.” And she tilts her head back so that it leans against the wall, closes her eyes, and laughs to herself, quietly.

Rose lowers her wands, slowly. She gives you a sharp look, jerking her head at your katana, and you lower it, too. Then she takes a step towards the girl. “Do you have access to the retina scanner? Can you help us?”

“Yes,” responds the girl. “But let me ask you a question, Lalonde girl.” Here she straightens, opening her eyes and turning her head to look directly at Rose. “Why should I risk myself for helping you?”

You grit your teeth, about to bark out something stupid about it being the right thing to do, but Rose answers calmly, in a smooth, quiet voice. “Because you’re as much of a prisoner as my brother is.” She takes a step forwards, closer to the girl, and nods at her bloody nose and black eye. “If you help us now, we can come up with a better escape plan to get him out. Maybe one where we could take you with us.” One more step, even closer, and now they’re face-to-face, looking each other directly in the eyes. “You would never have to see that man again.”

The girl’s face, which had still been set in a half-smile, sobers during the course of Rose’s speech, going very serious. In her eyes, though, you see a glimmer of hope. Then she shakes her head. “Pretty words, Lalonde, very pretty words. But my boss is not one to give up so easily. If you steal away his prey, he would come after it eventually. If you steal me away, then it would make it easier for him. He knows where I am. He always knows.” The girl shoves off from the wall, standing for the first time and revealing that she is in fact at least a couple of inches taller than Rose, but continues to stare into the shorter girl’s eyes. “If you want my help, make me a promise. Kill him.”

Rose takes a deep breath, exhaling audibly, and then nods. Her mouth stretches into an unpleasant grin. “I was planning on doing that anyways.” For the first time, the girl looks truly delighted, and Rose steps aside to let her walk towards the safe. You step aside as well, giving the girl a clear path. She walks confidently up to it. It’s almost comical how small she looks next to it- she’s not a short girl, but the safe entirely dwarfs her- but she stands on tiptoe and taps twice on one of the numbers (number 13, you notice), and a small panel slides open, revealing a glowing red light. She puts her eye to the panel, letting it scan.

There is a click as the safe unlocks itself.

The girl steps back, a slight smile on her face, as you rush forwards to open the safe door. It’s lighter than you expected (or perhaps just extremely well-balanced), and it swings silently on its hinges, revealing a small room behind it with a surprising lack of any furniture, and of Hal. As you step into the room and stare around at the emptiness, Rose and the girl enter behind you, shutting the safe door. You panic momentarily in the blackness, before there is a “click” and the room floods with light. Looking around the room, you can see that the girl has flipped a light switch. She looks at you, amused.

“Afraid of the dark?” she asks, faux-sympathetically, and you roll your eyes.

“No, just afraid of being walked into a trap like a lamb to slaughter.”

“Mm. That is a good idea. Maybe I will try it sometime.” The girl walks over to you and motions you to step aside, then kneels down on the floor where you had been. She taps on one of the tiles and the process with the safe repeats: a panel slides open, a red light comes out. Putting her eye to the panel opens a trapdoor in the floor, the top few rungs of a ladder just visible before it descends into darkness. The girl sits back on her heels and looks up. “After you.”

You shrug, then start lowering yourself rung by rung down the ladder. Above you, you hear noises that indicate that the others are following, and then the light shuts off and you know the trapdoor has closed. You pause in your descent for a moment, tightening your grip on the rungs, and then continue downwards by feel. Finally, you jump down from the last rung, hitting the floor, and stand aside for the others. It doesn’t take long for them to join you.

The girl turns on a light again, and you see that in front of you, there is a plain wooden door. You look at the girl, expecting her to go up and open it, but she shakes her head. “It is not a retina scanner. Normal lock. I can’t do shit with that.”

You nod, then look at Rose. “Your time to shine, kid.”

She looks at you, lips pursed in annoyance, but nods and brings out the lockpicking kit again. “Thank you for recognizing my fifteen minutes of fame, professor. I greatly appreciate it.” As she gets to work on the lock, the sarcasm is so thick in the air and in her every movement that you could spread it on butter. You sigh and turn to the girl.

“So, what do we call you?”

She looks a bit startled at the question. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what’s your name?” you try again. She stares at you blankly, and then shakes her head and turns back to watch Rose. You look at her for a moment more before shrugging and turning away as well. _Ehh. It was a long shot anyways._ But then she breaks the silence.

“I am called the Handmaid,” she says, not looking at you. “But my name is Damara.”

“Pretty name,” Rose comments idly, continuing to pick the lock. You glance at her, but she seems once more absorbed in her task, so you turn back.

“Damara,” you say, trying to pronounce it right. There’s no reaction from her, so you guess you succeeded. “Thank you for helping us. I’m-”

“I know who you are, Dirk Strider.” Damara turns and looks directly at you, and for the first time you notice the color of her eyes- a peculiar shade of light brown, almost amber, with hints of red in the light. You shiver from the eeriness of her gaze.

As Rose picks away at the lock, humming slightly under her breath, you draw back slightly and massage your temples with your fingers. You’re beginning to get a headache. It’s been a long day. But that’s offering no relief, and there’s one more question on your mind, so you drop your hands and look at Damara. “So, question: why are you coming with us, again? It seems slightly fishy.”

She raises her eyebrows. “For a teacher, you are very bad at listening.” She pauses for a moment. “On second thought, it may be because you are a teacher. But I did tell you. My boss knows where I am, always. If I open the safe door and the trap door and then leave and walk away, it is a suspicious action and he would find you. If I go down into the prisoner’s room, I can say I did it to talk, or for company. That is not unusual.” She snorts derisively. “He will be angry with me, but that’s not unusual either.”

“But….” you indicate Rose picking the lock, then raise your eyebrows at Damara. She smirks slightly.

“Lying is a great invention of mankind. I will tell him I learned to pick locks.” The smirk turns into a smile. “You should not worry. I won’t get you caught. The idea of that lowly son of a bitch dying the slow and painful death he deserves is too good to pass up.”

You look at her face, battered and bleeding, and think of Hal, locked up and being used as blackmail. You nod. “The bastard deserves everything he gets.”

At that moment, Rose pulls the pick out of the lock and stands, looking at you and Damara excitedly. “I got it.” Taking a deep breath, she opens the door.

Rose goes in first, you following, and finally, finally, you see Hal again. He looks exhausted and disheveled, his hair mussed and clothes wrinkled and shades askew, but his mouth hangs open in surprise as he stares at you and his sister. “Holy _shit_ ,” he whispers, and the sound of his voice is what solidifies your relief. He’s here. He’s really here.

Hal jumps up from the bed where he’s sitting and grabs his sister, pulling her into a tight hug. A noise comes from his throat like a sob, and Rose rubs his back gently. “It’s okay. We’re here.” At those words, Hal pulls back slightly, looking worried.

“Is mom okay?” he asks, his voice slightly fearful. Rose nods.

“She’s waiting in the woods with Dave.” Hal nods, relaxing considerably, leaning against his sister for a second more before pulling away. He takes a deep breath, then turns to you next, his face set in the same smug mask you’ve grown used to.

“Hello again, Professor Strider. Fancy seeing you here.” He looks you up and down, crooking one of his eyebrows. “You’re looking… even less professional than usual, which I didn’t think was actually possible.” The snark is so familiar and normal that your eyes threaten to overflow with tears, and you laugh, wiping them with the back of your hand.

“Like you’re in any position to talk, Hal. I mean, what happened, a tornado hit you or something?” You gesture to his body, and he snorts, his mouth curling into a smile.

“I’ll have you know that I got kidnapped. What’s your excuse?”

“I foolishly decided to try to rescue you,” you say. Hal’s face goes serious.

“Yeah,” he says, awkwardly reaching up to scratch the back of his head and looking away. “I…. yeah. Thanks, professor. Thank you.”

You shake your head. “No one kidnaps my students.”

He glances back up at you and smiles. Suddenly, though, he focuses just over your shoulder and freezes completely, the smile dropping off his face. He raises his arm and points around you. “What the ever-living fuck is _she_ doing here?!” You turn and look at Damara, who has adopted the universal hands-up position of surrender in what you assume is an attempt to look harmless. It’s not working- she just looks like she’s preparing to hit someone once their guard is down. Hal is staring at her as if she’s the literal embodiment of the devil. “She helped kidnap me, are you both _idiots_?” He looks at you, then at Rose, looking absolutely horrified.

Damara rolls her eyes, keeping her hands up. “Relax, little Lalonde. I am a good guy here. Or at least, I’m helping them.” Hal looks unconvinced. You sigh.

“She's telling the truth, Hal. She’s helping us. We never would have even gotten here if it wasn’t for her.”

Damara nods. “I want out of here as much as you do, Lalonde. I want freedom.” Finally, Hal relaxes slightly, though he still looks a bit suspicious. You look at Damara, and jerk your head towards the door slightly. She exhales exasperatedly. “Fine. I will wait outside, tell you if there is trouble. But hurry.” And she slips out the door, leaving it open very slightly behind her so as not to lock you in.

Hal heads for the door as well, but you grab his wrist to stop him. “Whoa there, you can’t leave yet.” He glares at you.

“What do you mean I can’t leave? You came here to rescue me, didn’t you? I don’t know if anyone told you this, professor, but generally when you go to rescue someone who has been imprisoned, you free them from their prison. Right, Rose?” he asks, turning to his sister.

Rose shakes her head, ignoring the incredulous “What?!” from Hal. “We’re here to give you an essential item so we can have more time to formulate a better attack plan. We were supposed to blow up the security measures keeping you in and then grab you and run, but Damara," Rose indicates the door, "has alerted us to a problem with that plan.” Rose pauses for a moment to asses her brother’s current state, which is one of sullen anger, before continuing. “If we just take you, no matter where we go, that man will eventually find us and follow. It is inevitable. And we aren’t just taking you- we’re going to bring Damara with us-”

Hal cuts Rose off. “OK, no. Sis, you’ve officially done a complete fucking backflip off the handle of sanity and into the deep end. We’re not bringing her with us. We’re just fucking _not._ She’s an accomplice to kidnapping and who knows what else, she’s dangerous, she’s-”

Rose interrupts her younger brother, sounding annoyed. “She’s the one who got us in here, she’s the one who can get us out, and by all indications she’s the one who has been in a situation like yours for who knows how long, but no one came to get her. Damara is stuck under the rule of her boss, who is an abusive criminal forcing her to be an accessory to crime. I can’t let that continue, and I know for sure mom wouldn’t let that continue. So, Hal yes, we fucking _are_ bringing her with us, and we’re going to kill her boss to make sure that she, and us, get a long, peaceful life while he becomes the victim of a mobius double karmic reacharound. Do you understand me?”

Hal hesitates, then nods. “Yeah. I understand.”

“Good.” You realize you’re still holding his wrist and let go quickly, pulling your hand back. Hal glances at you briefly, rubbing his arm where your hand was. You wonder if you hurt him. You really hope you didn't, not least because Roxy’s revenge would be swift and painful.

“So,” Hal asks, after a moment of awkward silence, “What did you come here to do, if not get me out of here?”

Rose pulls the charger out of her other pocket. It’s surprisingly small, only around the size of a miniature candy bar, with a USB port on the end. “Your battery will run out soon. We brought you a charger. It should keep you going until the deadline given to us by the man in the motorcycle helmet. Here.” She hands the charger to Hal, who presses his fingers to his neck. The panel slides open, revealing his charging cord. He fiddles around with the end for a minute, and then the wall-socket adaptor comes off the end, revealing a connector compatible with the port on the charger. He plugs it in, then pauses.

“I can’t just let this hang out of my neck. They’ll see it.”

“Hmm. Couldn’t you, I don’t know, shove it into the panel with the cord?” you ask. Hal looks at you like you’re crazy, but then shrugs.

“Sure. It’s gonna be hard to do that without being able to see it, though. You want to do the honors, professor?” You sigh, then walk over to check out the panel and the charger.

Looking at the compartment under Hal’s skin, you can see that it’s plenty big enough to fit the charger, it’s just a matter of turning it the right way. You fiddle with it and the cord for a second, then push them both into the compartment, fully aware of how weird this is and the contrast between Hal’s skin and the metal of his interior. Finally, you shut the panel. “We’re good.” Hal rubs his neck and nods.

“Yeah. OK.” He looks up at you. “You did good, professor.” Then he looks behind you and smiles fondly. “And you, big sister. Thanks.”

“No problem,” you say, but you’re drowned out by Rose.

“You didn’t think we would just leave you, did you?” she asks, quirking her brows. Then her face softens. “We’ll get you out of here, Hal. You won’t have to wait much longer.”

Damara pokes her head into the room.

“Hate to ruin your touchy-feely moment, but leaving soon would be a good idea. Say your goodbyes.” She pops back out again.

“Right,” says Hal. “You should go.” He smiles waveringly at you both, and something tightens oddly in your chest. You realize that you really don’t want to leave him here. But you take a deep breath, and nod to him.

“We’re coming back for you. Be ready.” You walk out the door to join Damara, who raises an eyebrow at you.

“You didn’t say he wanted to fuck you,” she says, and you swear to god, if you had water you would have done a spit-take right there. As it is, you splutter incoherently for a moment before being able to form a sentence.

“What? How the hell did you get that idea? He didn’t- we aren’t- Jesus Christ, he’s my student!”

She shrugs. “Doesn’t mean anything. But you are blind for not noticing.”

You’re about to respond indignantly when Rose comes out of the room and shuts the door behind her, tears running down her cheeks. She says nothing, just begins to climb the ladder out. You follow immediately. You can’t wait to get the fuck out of here.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of the end.

Returning to the camp means taking another risky dash across the open field, but the both of you finally get back to where Roxy and Dave are waiting. Roxy notices you first, seeing you and Rose through the trees, and shoots to her feet. “Where is he? What happened? Are you okay?” she asks, firing off the questions in quick succession, her voice tight. 

Dave stands too, seeming to finally manage to get his feet under himself, and puts his hand on his mother’s shoulder.

“Mom,” he says, and she pauses in her relentless questions to look at him questioningly. He nods at you and Rose. “I think you might need to give them a minute to actually answer before asking more stuff.”

Roxy opens her mouth to respond, then closes it, exhaling through her nose.

“Fine.” She nods at Rose to indicate that she should begin talking. 

Rose inclines her head gratefully at her mother, then begins answering. “Hal is fine,” she says, and pauses as her mother seems to take her first real, deep breath since you both came back from the house. “He’s being kept behind the safe door and underground-” But here Roxy jumps in again.

“Wait, Rosie, back up a little. How did you open the safe door without being noticed? And why isn’t Hal here?” The tone of her voice rises again towards the end of her question, becoming strained. Rose sighs and looks at you.

“Professor Strider, would you like to take over here? It seems my mother isn’t prepared to listen to what I have to say without interruption.”

You shrug. “Remember the girl from the video?” Roxy nods. “Well, she found us contemplating how to get into the safe and offered to help, under the condition that we kill her boss- the man in the motorcycle helmet- and help her escape. We agreed to her terms, she opened the safe for us, then took us to the cell where Hal is being kept. We gave him the charger, talked to him for a little bit, and then came back here.”

Roxy blinks for a second. “So…” she trails off.

Dave interjects helpfully. “I think what they’re trying to say is that we bought time like it was fifty percent off at Macy’s, and now we can actually plan shit instead of rushing in there with a half-assed with a single guideline that basically amounts to “fuck it up”.”

Rose nods. “More or less, yes.”

Roxy looks back and forth between the three of you, and then puts her head in her hands. Her shoulders shake, and at first you think she’s crying, but then she looks up again, and you see she’s laughing, so hard that she has to stumble over to a nearby tree and lean against it to steady herself. Dave and Rose exchange a confused glance, before Rose turns back towards Roxy and takes a cautious step forwards. “Mother? Is something wrong?”

Roxy shakes her head, still laughing. She shakes her head, then seems to regain her composure a little, wiping her eyes. “Oh, honey, everything’s fine.” She looks up at Rose and smiles. “You did good work today.”

Rose looks slightly taken aback by Roxy’s comment, her eyebrows going up and mouth opening slightly. Just as quickly, though, her face settles into its usual vaguely insincere expression. “It’s nice to know that putting my life on the line finally earned your approval.” She glances at you and her mouth flattens into a wry line. “I suspect, however, that the professor should be excluded in that respect. He did end up helping us by chance, after all.”

You widen your eyes, pressing your hands to your heart to mock being offended. “I can’t believe you don’t think I’m a dedicated educator who considers it my duty to protect the students left under my care, Rose.” You drop the act. “And besides, I became invested in Hal’s health and wellbeing as soon as he decided I was a trustworthy individual. That’s more important than teaching English to teenagers who aren’t paying attention any day.”

Roxy’s stopped laughing by now, and is leaning against the tree regarding you with interest. “In any case, Mr. Strider, thank you. We kind of need all the help we can afford to get, which isn’t much.”

You bob your head in an awkward nod, unsure of how to respond to her thanks. “Yeah.” You hesitate for a moment, knowing that this is wholly unsatisfactory as a response. Finally, you follow it up with “No problem,” and whisper “Fuck” under your breath because that wasn’t any better. Roxy seems to get the memo that you aren’t actually used to being complimented in a sincere manner and changes the subject.

“So!” she says, pushing herself back into standing normally. “I’m going to make an executive decision here and now about our schedule, or at least part of it. We have a little more than a day before Motorcycle Man calls time and tries to hurt or kill Hal- let’s call it 26 hours. So we have at least some time to work out an attack plan. Until then, I suggest that everyone gets some sleep.”

As soon as Roxy says the word “sleep”, you realize how utterly exhausted you are- tired down to the bone. But apparently not everyone feels the same way as you do, because Dave groans loudly and Rose looks disgusted at the mere thought of sleep. She tries to argue against it. “That’s completely counterproductive. Sleep isn’t useful. We could be using that time to plan, work on a more foolproof attack.”

Roxy shakes her head. “If we’re all sleep deprived, any plan we come up with won’t be worth the effort, and come tomorrow thinking will be too hard to manage, let alone trying to save Hal. You can only run on adrenalin for so long before you crash.”

Rose crosses her arms, looking indignant, and Dave jumps in. “Look, mom, that’s even assuming we  _ can  _ lay down our heads on a bed of pine needles and dirt, count off some sheep, and drift off away into dreamland. That’s just a notion that makes no fucking sense.”

Roxy exhales through her nose, exasperated. “Fine. Then Davey, you’ll be delighted to know that I’m assigning people to keep watch. You’re starting first.”

Dave thinks about it for a second, then shrugs. “Why the fuck not, it’s better than the other option.”

“Good,” says Roxy, and you hear the fatigue in her voice. “You get two hours, then wake up someone else and get some sleep. They get two hours, and so on. Wake us all up if we’re discovered. Scream or something. Doesn’t really matter how.” Dave nods his assent and goes off to sit over by the edge of the tree line, almost out of sight of the rest of you, but close enough to the clearing that he could see any movement happening out there. You look after him for a moment, then yawn, unbuckle your sword belt and let it fall to the ground with your katana, and turn away to find the coziest spot of ground you can. Finally picking a spot without too many tree roots, you take off your shades and set them next to you before curling up in your new bed. You spend a few minutes thinking about how it’s fucking cold out here and wishing that you had brought some kind of jacket or anything before all your brain activity switches off as quickly as turning out a light.

You don’t dream.

 

* * *

Rose wakes you up sometime later, and you grumble, setting yourself up for the watch. The sky gradually lightens as your two hours pass, and you catch yourself slipping into a light doze more times than you can count, which given your current state of exhaustion is not very high. But slowly you wake up more and more, until by the end of your shift you’re fully awake and fidgeting with anticipation. You couldn’t possibly go back to sleep, which is why you stay awake for another two hours instead of waking Roxy, pacing along the tree line and looking out over the clearing, checking the time on your phone constantly.

Finally, as soon as four hours is up, you go to wake up everyone else, starting with Roxy. You kneel next to her, considering shaking her shoulder as Rose did to you but cringing away from the thought of touching her. It seems too familiar and awkward in this situation. You settle for saying “Ms. Lalonde,” quietly, trying to will her to wake up. She doesn’t move except for the steady rise and fall of her chest, and you sigh before saying it again, slightly louder. She just rolls over, almost colliding with a tree but never noticing. You exhale through your nose, short and sharp, before leaning in and whisper-yelling “Roxy!”

This time, her eyes open slightly and she looks at you, seeming confused. “Mr. Strider? Why are you in my bedroom?”

“I’m not,” you say flatly. She blinks at you, then looks around, her eyes slowly widening as she remembers where she is and the events of the past day. You see her swallow visibly before looking back at you.

“So it’s my turn for watch now?”

You shake your head. “Nah. I’ve been up for four hours, couldn’t sleep any more. It’s time for everyone to get up, really.” You stand, brushing off your pants (not that it does much good), and offer Roxy a hand. She grabs it and hauls herself into a standing position before stretching out her arms and rolling her neck to get the cricks out.

“Thanks.” Then she heads over to Dave, putting her hand gently on his arm and shaking. He wakes up immediately, jerking upright and looking around frantically.

“What? Where?” he asks, sounding panicked, before catching sight of Roxy’s face and relaxing. Then his face drops in dismay. “Oh, shit. It was real.”

“Yeah, Davey,” says Roxy, sounding tired and sad. “It was. And now it’s time to get up. You take your time while I wake your sister.” She gets up and walks over to Rose, and Dave stares after her, looking like he hurts somewhere deep down inside. Then he takes a deep breath, grabs his shades off the ground, and stands up. He catches you watching and looks at you flatly.

“What?”

His voice holds a hint of confrontation in it, and that’s more than you can handle right now. You sigh. “Nothing.” And then you turn away without another word, watching Roxy wake up Rose, who groans and complains and tries to shield her eyes from the light while her mother gets progressively more exasperated. But she does get up eventually, looking like someone used her to try and sweep the forest floor. You’re not surprised at this process at all. When she was in your class, you held a suspicion that Rose lived in a state of perpetual fatigue, and this just confirms it for you.

When the three Lalondes are all awake and at least semi-coherent, you all sit down in a ragged circle, you and Rose and Dave turned towards Roxy expectantly. It reminds you absurdly of a kindergarten classroom, with Roxy as a teacher, and you cough to hide the laugh this thought startles out of you. You think Rose notices anyways, but thankfully she doesn’t say anything. Instead, there’s silence from you and the twins as Roxy begins the discussion of what to do next.

“Okay, so we all spent about eight hours sleeping total. Now we have 18 hours to make up a plan of attack and get it into action. Any ideas? Remember, we’re saving two people and… _disposing_ of a third.”

There’s silence for a moment before Dave speaks up. “I have absolutely no fucking clue how we should go about raiding the enemy base in general, but we are going to need everybody, right? That includes you, mom, and I might be barking up the wrong tree completely, like goddammit Lassie little Timmy’s in the well not hiding in the canopy like some sort of ape-man, but that means you can’t cover our digital tracks. So maybe make like a hacker in a cheap action movie and take out their electronic shit completely? Totally black out the systems, make them go crazy, whatever the fuck. I don’t know.” He goes quiet abruptly and taps his fingers nervously on his knee, shifting slightly in his spot, but Roxy points at him, looking delighted.

“Yes! Perfect, exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for. Now that you mention it, I’ve already got an idea of how I’m gonna ruin their surveillance. But there’s a problem with this, too; as soon as everything goes down, they’re going to know something’s up. So, what do we do with that?”

Rose clears her throat slightly. “I have a suggestion.” Roxy nods at her, and she continues. “Even though we lose the advantage of surprise when we wreck their shit, we can still plan it so that it won’t matter as much. Possibly we could station ourselves in positions near enough to the house that it won’t take us very long to act once stuff goes down.”

You jump in. “I agree with Rose, but it matters when we actually time the whole thing, too. When would be the best time to actually start the process so as to surprise them the most. Closer to the deadline or further away? If we maximize surprise, it’ll be easier for us to win.”

Roxy hums, tapping her chin pensively. “Well, if I was a disgusting kidnapper holding someone for blackmail, I’d start letting my guard down closer to the deadline, because the closer it gets the more likely it’ll be that they aren’t coming. Thoughts?” She looks around your little group.

You tilt your head thoughtfully. “...Yeah, I think I’d agree with that. Only, a problem: would Hal and Damara be surprised too? We don’t want them to be unprepared, it’ll slow us down.”

Roxy looks at you, brows drawn together in confusion. “Wait, who’s Damara?”  _ Ah, shit.  _ You curse yourself for your oversight, and explain.

“Damara’s the girl from the video, our ally on the inside. Not much of an ally if she has no idea what’s going on and can’t help, though.”

“Ohhhh,” says Roxy, nodding her head to show she understands. “Yeah, okay. I get what you’re saying, Mr. Strider, but I don’t agree. It’ll be the opposite for them- the closer it gets to the deadline, the more sure they’ll be that we’ll be coming for them soon, so I think we should let it get close.”

“OK, yeah, but how close?” Dave asks. “Thirty minutes? An hour? What?”

“Well…”

After a lot of squabbling, the four of you finally settle on an hour and a half before the deadline as “go time”. That’s when you’ll go in teams of two: you and Roxy as one team, Dave and Rose as the other. There’s a bit of a protest on Dave’s part that splitting up is how people die in horror movies, but Roxy counters by saying that there’s only one guy against you there and if you split up he can only take on two of you at a time. (The fact that this only works if Damara isn’t lying about being on your side remains unspoken.) The four of you decide that Dave and Rose will enter through the back door and you and Roxy through the front, both of you taking different paths through the mansion to the safe. Once you get there, bets are off. If Damara isn’t there or can’t let you in, you do things the hard way and blow things up, but either way some or all of you will reach Hal and get him out of there. Then you focus on ridding the world of the man in the motorcycle helmet.

Planning finished, Roxy gets out her laptop and starts tapping on it, working on a virus that will take down everything in the mansion. The rest of you go over your positions and plans incessantly, trying to plan things down to the minute. And as time ticks by, your stomach seems to boil with anticipation.

You’re doing it.

You’re making this happen.

* * *

91 minutes before deadline, Roxy activates the virus. Exactly one minute later, you and her are in position outside the front door of the house. She aims her strange-looking red gun at the door and fires. There’s a noise like a bang, and suddenly the door just  _ isn’t there,  _ like it never existed at all in the first place. You draw your katana, Roxy holds her gun ready to fire, and you enter the house.

You’re greeted with dead silence, save for the ticking of several hundred neon green clocks. And, suddenly, an explosion from the other side of the house that indicates that Rose and Dave have made their entrance. 

You look at Roxy, waiting for instruction, and she nods. The two of you proceed further into the house, you following her this time.

It’s strange how empty the house is, and as you and Roxy approach the staircase that leads up to the upper floors, you start to get more and more jumpy. It seems  _ wrong _ , too easy, and your suspicion meter slowly rises. You see Roxy looking around nervously, and know she feels the same.

When you reach the stairs, you both ascend slowly, taking careful steps up to the landing, where the safe door hasn’t been opened yet. Damara is nowhere in sight, so Roxy takes aim with her gun again, carefully twisting a dial on the side. She fires, inciting an even louder bang than last time, and you flinch, closing your eyes for just a moment. In that half-second before you open them, there’s a small  _ click _ , coming from the space inside the safe, and Roxy inhales through her teeth.

Your eyes blink open, and you finally see the man in the motorcycle helmet, aiming a white pistol at Roxy.


	7. Chapter 7

“Ms. Lalonde,” says the man, his voice fluctuating oddly, “I must say that I’m disappointed.” He takes a step forward, holding the gun steady and casually with one hand, the barrel pointed right between her eyes. “For such a brilliant scientist, your plan to rescue your son was, quite frankly, lackluster. I may attribute some of the more hasty parts to your shortage of time, but not everything. Though I will admit I was impressed by the virus you coded. It was almost good enough to slip past my defenses. Almost.” He makes a horrible grating noise that you assume is a laugh. “I don’t believe I’ve introduced myself to you, by the way. You may call me Doc Scratch.”

“Yeah?” says Roxy. The reflective visor of his helmet shows you her face, screwed up in rage, teeth bared. “Good thing I don’t care who you are.” Her gun is still up, pointed at Doc Scratch, and you see her finger tighten slightly on the trigger, preparing to shoot him.

Before she can, he fires and Roxy hisses in pain and drops her gun as she clasps her hand to the bullet wound on her shoulder. Scratch jumps forwards and you lunge, slash your sword to try and wound him, but he grabs it and pulls it away from you and you yelp in pain and fall. You try to shove yourself back up, but your arms burn like they muscles have been pulled apart and before you can get up he whips around and hits Roxy with the hilt of your sword. He tosses it aside as she stumbles and grabs her, putting the barrel of the pistol against her head. Time stops.

“Tsk, tsk, Mr. Strider,” Scratch scolds, shaking his head slowly at you. “Your form was poor. I know you can do better than that. It’s a shame you won’t get to. I would advise against getting up, by the way. We wouldn’t want Ms. Lalonde here to lose a substantial portion of her skull and brain.” Roxy struggles slightly in his grip and he tightens it.“And Ms. Lalonde, I don’t want to shoot you, but I happily will if necessary. After all, while it would be useful to have a scientific genius on hand, you seem to be more trouble than you’re worth.” He tilts his head. “I suspect your daughter might be more cooperative.”

“My daughter?” says Roxy. Her eyes widen in comprehension. “What have you done to her? Where is she? Where’s Dave? _What did you do to my children?!”_ You look up at her and frantically shake your head, trying to get her to calm down a little so he won’t shoot her then and there, but she doesn’t even see you. She struggles harder.

Scratch doesn’t shoot her- instead he sighs, keeping his grip on Roxy. “Such hysteria. I assure you, your children are unharmed, or at least they should be if they are as smart as I believe they are. I have merely sent my assistant to round them up. She should be arriving shortly, by the way. We won’t have to wait for much longer.” His voice and face are impossible to read, but his posture is relaxed, head tilted slightly to the left, smug and pleased with himself.

 _Damara._ You should have known better than to trust her, that two-faced backstabbing witch.

Speak of the devil, there are footsteps behind you, and you see Damara’s warped reflection in Doc Scratch’s helmet, standing behind Dave and Rose as they walk up the stairs, one of Rose’s wands set against the small of their backs. You turn to get a better look at them, moving slowly, just in case Scratch mistakes what you’re doing for aggression and blows Roxy’s head off. Both kids look relatively unharmed, thank god. Dave’s face is set in a grimace of distaste, while Rose’s is pensive, like she’s trying to find a way out of the situation. Then they see their mother and freeze completely. Normally, the twins don’t look all that much alike, but the identical expressions of horror on their faces makes it clear how they’re related.

Damara, looking pissed off beyond belief, prods them to make them move. “Go. Forwards. I am losing patience.” You tense up a fraction more hearing this from her, but try not to show it, in case she or her boss actually does decide to lose their temper.

Scratch gives a whistling sigh, somehow managing to look exasperated without exposing his face. “Handmaid. It’s about time. Care to explain your lateness?”

Damara rolls her eyes. “Fuck off, old man. These two are stubborn, only way I could have gotten here quicker was to kill them. I don’t think you want that.”

“No, indeed,” says Scratch. You finally look back at him and Roxy and see tears coursing down her face. She looks older than you’ve ever seen her, and desperate, and horrified beyond belief. You know your face holds the same expression. But Scratch ignores both of you, continuing blithely. “So, Lalondes. And Mr. Strider, of course,” he adds contemptuously, nodding at you. “Now that I have you all gathered here, I have a proposition to make.” He turns slightly and addresses Rose. “Hello, young miss. Rose- may I call you Rose?” Her face stays stony, and he shrugs a shoulder the best he can while keeping a hold of Roxy. “I will take that as an indication that you will not stop me. But I digress. Rose, as you can see, I currently hold all the cards. I have your mother here, your brother next to you, your other brother locked up, and your former teacher as useless as an umbrella for a fish. I am not a gambling man, you must understand, but if I was I would not bet against myself. And I ask that you not bet against me, either.” He lets out that awful screech of a laugh again, and you wince. “I won’t presume to be so cliche as to ask you to join me, Rose, but I will say that I would be very… _grateful_ for your help. I might even presume to show my gratitude by freeing your family, at least relatively unharmed. You could save them all with your acceptance, while your refusal would mean the immediate death of your mother, the slightly less immediate death of your dear professor, and the much, much slower deaths of your brothers. Then, if you still refuse, you will be joining them.” Scratch’s voice is smug. “Consider it, at least.”

Rose stands, frozen, looking at her mother, at Dave, at you. When her eyes land on Roxy’s face, her mother shakes her head. “Rosie,” she rasps. “Don’t.” But Rose still looks uncertain, until Dave reaches out slowly and puts his hand on her shoulder. He looks at her pleadingly, but as she looks back, you see her shoulders square up and her jaw tighten. She takes a deep breath, turns to Scratch, and opens her mouth, and for a moment you’re sure she’s going to give in. But before Rose can say anything, Damara whispers something that you barely hear.

“Duck.”

Then she shoves down Rose and Dave, moving fast. Her action must take Scratch by surprise, because he hesitates just enough on pulling the trigger for Damara to shoot a bolt of energy at him with one of Rose's wands. She misses, barely, and blows a hole in the wall behind him, but it surprises him and he loosens his grip on Roxy enough for her to rip free. He fires at her, misses- the bullet embeds itself in a wall, and Roxy ducks out of the way. In the confusion you lunge for Roxy’s gun and grab it. You shove yourself to your feet and aim at Scratch, but Roxy screams at you. “Strider! Get Hal!” You change your trajectory and sprint past Scratch and Roxy, narrowly avoiding another blast from the wands as Damara fires again. Then you’re past, in the safe room, and you fire at the trapdoor in the middle of the floor. It disappears, adding more noise to the cacophony, and in a split second you realize there’s no time to climb down the dark shaft leading down.

Instead, you jump.

* * *

 

Thankfully the drop isn’t long- ten feet, maybe. At most twelve. But the landing still jars you, sending a shock all the way up your body. Your teeth slam down hard on your tongue, and you taste blood. It takes a moment for you to recover enough to stand, and a moment more to make everything stop spinning. Then you aim at the door to Hal’s room and fire. It disappears, the noise echoing in the tunnel, and there’s a surprised yelp and a thud from inside the room as Hal falls off his bed.

You enter the room, and he recovers his dignity fast enough, shooting to his feet. “Professor? Where’s everyone else?” He takes a moment to survey you, glancing you up and down. “Man, you look like hell.”

You sigh, flattening your lips together. “Hal, quite frankly, I don’t have time for your shit right now. Your family needs help, and you need to get the fuck out of here. So let’s go.” Hal stands still for a moment, apparently not processing this information, and you sigh, grab his arm, and pull him out of his cell. The noises from upstairs are still filtering down to your level faintly, but they’ve evolved into mostly screaming obscenities. You think you can hear Roxy’s voice, maybe Damara’s, and when you get to the ladder you left go of Hal and start climbing. The footsteps behind you tell you he’s following without protest, which is good, because you don’t have time to give him word-for-word instructions. You climb, and all of a sudden everything crescendos into screaming. Then, silence. _Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!_ You climb as fast as you can with the gun in one hand, and then the light is above you and you throw yourself out of the trapdoor shaft in an attempt to come to everyone’s rescue.

You manage to get most of the way out before Scratch shoots you.

* * *

You don’t even recognize it as a gunshot at first- it feels more like a giant hammer-blow to the ribs. You fall over and drop Roxy’s gun with a clatter, your feet dangling in the shaft, almost out, and you don’t scream- instead you make a strangled, pained noise that is so, so much worse. You don’t know what organs might have been hit, but damn if it doesn’t hurt like hell, and you pray silently that Hal heard the gunshot and decided to stay in the shaft and not do anything heroic. As you lie on your side, feeling blood soak through your already filthy shirt, you look over your shoulder and see Doc Scratch aiming at you with that pure white gun, looking not even a little ruffled by the struggle, save for blood on his pristine white gloves- and, as you see the bodies lying prone behind him, you know that it isn’t his. Roxy, unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. Rose with a leg twisted awkwardly underneath her, still trying to get up and fight but being stopped each time by the pain, her right hand twisted at an odd angle, swollen and purplish. Dave, clutching his side and struggling to breathe, face swollen and bleeding with shades cracked and hanging off one ear. Damara- she looks dead, beaten to a pulp, but as you see her stir slightly you realize she’s still conscious despite her injuries and you feel your eyes widen because that fact just seems so _wrong_. Scratch is the only one still standing, and as he pulls back the hammer on his gun, you see your own terrified face reflected in his helmet visor. He sighs.

“Mr. Strider,” he says, and then pauses. “Dirk. After all, Mr. Strider was your brother, wasn’t he?” You want to be sick when he mentions your brother, or maybe that’s because of the pain or blood loss. But you can’t do anything but glare silently at Scratch as he continues to speak in that disgusting, self-satisfied voice. “It’s a shame, really. He was a fine man. Brilliant, in his own way. And you? You are nothing like him at all. Except,” Scratch leans in, keeping the gun trained on you, “for the fact that he had the same look on his face just before his own untimely demise. You resemble him very much in that respect.”

You stare uncomprehendingly into Scratch’s reflective visor for a second, looking at your face in the reflection, and then your vision seems to flicker and you see your bro’s face, with the same expression, lying on the floor. You inhale painfully as the revelation sinks in. Your bro never left. Never voluntarily.

For some reason, not once in ten years did you ever consider he could die.

“You son of a _bitch,”_ you hiss at him in-between clenched teeth as you press a hand to your wounded side, blood pumping out between your fingers. You want to say more, but it’s like your throat has seized up, closed in grief or pain or both.

“Oh no, not at all,” says Scratch. “Not nearly, Dirk. But if it’s any consolation, none of this will matter in a few seconds.”

You’ve always been a coward. So as Doc Scratch goes to pull the trigger, you want to shut your eyes. You desperately want to. But you keep them open even as your vision wavers around the edges. You keep them open in memory of your brother, and look directly up at Scratch’s visor, wanting him to look you in the eyes as you die.

That doesn’t happen. The dying part, that is. Because Hal launches himself out of the trapdoor shaft like a goddamn torpedo and slams into Doc Scratch with a wordless scream. He knocks the gun out of Scratch’s hands, tries to drag him to the ground ineffectively, and after a stunned moment you snap into action. You shove yourself up with a scream of rage and pain as you throw yourself against Scratch, grab his helmet, and wrench it back and forth in an attempt to disorient him as he struggles to regain his balance. You’re only vaguely aware of Hal next to you as he punches Scratch over and over in time a symphony of cracks and crunches and screams, and your vision starts to flicker and narrow, going dark around the edges. You grit your teeth and draw back a fist to punch him right in the visor, but before you can there’s a flash of green and red, a squelch, a crack, and a sizzle of electricity. Scratch goes limp, and you just barely manage to let go of him before he falls to the ground, one of Rose's needles buried in his neck, right at the base of the skull. You look at his body, then at Hal, and finally up at Damara, who stands across from the corpse, breathing hard. Blood bubbles from her nose and runs down her face. Both her eyes are almost swollen shut. She holds one arm stiff and as still as possible, and blood spots her green dress. As she looks back at you, her face is screwed up into a grimace of pain.

“Good riddance,” she says, her voice hoarse and strained, and you nod back at her, still fighting a losing battle to breathe.

Then Dave, sitting against the wall, starts to laugh.

“We did it, little brother. We fucking won.”

Damara glances at him, then snorts, making an awful noise through the blood streaming from her nose. “You mean I won.” She kneels down on the floor next to Scratch and winces as she flips over his corpse so that his helmet visor faces the ceiling.  “Let’s see your face, bastard.” And she flips open the visor.

There’s no face behind it. Just wires, sparking intermittently.

The look of surprise on Hal’s face is the last thing you see before you stumble and fall to the ground, unconscious.


	8. Chapter 8

You wake up in the hospital, with no idea how you got there. The nurse tells you, when going in and out of your room, that you were dropped off in the emergency room looking half-dead. She’s surprised you survived this long, she says, but it was probably due to luck- the bullet missed your vital organs, hitting a rib instead- and to the person or people who attempted first aid to staunch the bleeding. She doesn’t understand why you laugh so hard at that, but you can’t stop.  _ Goddammit, Hal. _

You’re tempted to ask about the Lalondes, whether or not they’re okay, but that would raise all sorts of questions you don’t want to answer right now (you can already tell the nurse is having to bite her tongue to avoid asking you what happened.) So you let her take your blood pressure and tell her that no, you’re not in too much pain and you don’t need more knockout drugs, and she leaves you to your worrying before you can ask where your shades are.

As you stare up to the light blue ceiling of your hospital room, you think about the events of the past week. They feel surreal, like none of these things could have possibly actually happened, but the hole in your side that throbs in time to your heartbeat says different. Your worldview had already needed adjusting before Hal’s abduction, but now…. How are you ever supposed to go back to teaching high school English?

Fairly easily, as it turns out. Your boss, Principal Peixes, is utterly pissed off that you left for so long without even bothering to call in sick. She chews you out for a while before you even manage to get the words out and concoct a bullshit story about being mugged that explains why you’re in the hospital. Her reaction is barely sympathetic- she says to be back on Monday or she’s firing you. So, after trying again and again over the weekend to call the Lalondes and failing each time, back to school on Monday you are. You’re sitting in your desk forty-five minutes before the first class of the day, organizing and re-organizing your papers, when the door opens. You look up, expecting another teacher.

It’s Hal.

You can’t stop yourself from smiling wide, which would be embarrassing if not for the way that Hal’s face lights up as well. You both get yourselves back under control quickly, though- your face settles back into a mask of indifference, and Hal’s goes back to that barely detectable I’m-better-than-you smirk before he saunters over and sits down in the front row, in a seat directly in front of your desk. “So, professor,” he says. “How was your vacation?”

You snort slightly. “It went just as well as yours, I suspect.” There’s silence for a second as Hal doodles on a piece of paper, then you cough and, slowly, get up and move around the desk, sitting carefully on the edge, only wincing slightly as your wound aches. Hal looks up and raises an eyebrow at you, and you sigh, slumping your shoulders slightly. “Is everyone okay?”

There’s a pause, and Hal’s face twists slightly into an expression somewhere between relief and regret. “Yeah, mostly they’re fine. Pretty beat up, though. Dave’s got a few broken ribs, Rose’s leg and hand were pretty bad, mom has a mild concussion. Damara was the worst- all sorts of internal bleeding. She keeps trying to get out of her bed and walk around, too. Insists that she’s had worse. But… yeah.” Hal is quiet for a second, mouth turned down at the corners. “It could have been a lot worse.”

You nod. “Yeah. And…” you pause. “Are you okay?” You’re no longer surprised by the concern in your voice, but Hal is. He looks up at you, eyebrows raised and drawn together in confusion and surprise.

“Why do you care?”

It’s your turn to be surprised and, if you’re honest, more than a little offended and angry. “Why do I- Hal, did it ever occur to you that I might actually give a fuck? At any moment during the time I was trying to help rescue you? When I took a goddamn bullet getting you out of there? God, how can you even ask that question, I- Jesus Christ.” You bury your head in your hands, making your next words come out a bit muffled. “I can’t believe this.” Your anger dissolves into resignation, and you slump further. “Fuck,” you whisper, not talking to Hal anymore, just speaking to yourself. “Fuck.”

Hal makes a noise you can’t quite identify, and you raise your head up slowly. He’s not looking at you, head turned away, and your chest tightens a little. “I concede your point,” he says quietly. “I spoke rashly.” And now he looks at you, giving you a bit of a smile. “I’m okay, professor. Just disappointed in myself.” Then his face shifts again. He takes a deep breath and removes his shades, putting them gently on the desk, folded. Hal looks at you, his eyes black and red and strangely comforting, a huge difference from the first time you saw them. His brows are drawn together above them in concern. “What about you?”

“Me?” you ask, looking at him, almost incredulous. You’re tempted to tell him it’s fine, just forget about it, and then change the subject. But you stare into his eyes, and the word “No” comes out of your mouth even before you consciously decide to say it. You collapse a little, drawing your arms around yourself and lowering your head, curling inwards. “My brother is dead,” you say, and it’s a little kid’s voice coming out, not yours, and you’re ashamed for doing this in front of Hal, who went through so much more. A tear slips down your cheek, and it takes serious effort to keep the rest of your face expressionless, deep breaths to keep you from sobbing.  _ Fuck. _

You’re not supposed to break.

There’s a bit of a scraping sound, and you look up to see Hal scooting his chair back. He gets up and walks over, then sits on the edge of the desk, next to you. You look at him, silently, then inhale slowly and take your glasses off, seeing him unobstructed except for the blurriness of tears that you blink away. He gives you a slight nod of appreciation for removing your shades, and you have to close your eyes and try to regain your composure again when you realize again that he’s the only person still live who has ever seen you without them. Then you open your eyes and look at Hal’s face. He tilts his head, studying you, his face solemn. “I don’t understand your pain, professor. I can’t. It’s foreign to me. But…” Hal hesitates, then takes a deep breath. “I wish you hadn’t found out like that.”

You look at him, at Hal’s face, his expression for once serious, and you have the sudden urge to reach out and trail your fingers across the circuit lines around his eyes, the ones that his shades usually hide. You squash it down, a bit surprised at your own reaction, and shake your head. “Yeah, but I’m glad I finally know what happened for sure. I spent so long thinking he left me….” you trail off, your gaze slipping away from Hal’s face to stare into the distance until you snap it back. “Anyways. At least you’re okay.”

Hal looks at you for another moment, then hunches his shoulders, hanging his head. “I wish you hadn’t gotten dragged into this. I’m sorry.”

You stare at him for a moment, at his face, and remember his words from earlier.  _ I’m just disappointed in myself.  _ Before you can stop yourself, you reach out and put a hand on his arm, an attempt at comfort. He looks up at you, eyebrows tilted upwards in confusion, and you shake your head. “None of this was your fault.”

“Intuitively, I know that. But there’s still a part of me that thinks…. Maybe I could have done something. When they first tried to take me. Fought harder or something, done more. Stopped Scratch from hurting my family. Stopped him from hurting you. Something.” He shakes his head, his gaze turning back down. “I should have been able to do something.”

You look at him for a moment, then withdraw your hand. “Hey,” you say softly. “Look at me.” Hal does, looking you in the eyes, and you lean towards him slightly. “”Should” is a useless word. You’re passing judgement on yourself when you say you should have done something. You’re saying that no matter what you did do, it wasn’t enough. And Hal,” you say, speaking quietly to him, “that’s just not true. You did fight. Thanks to you, we got Damara out of that hellhole she’d been trapped in for years. You helped kill Scratch.” You look at him, directly, not letting your gaze waver. “You saved my life. And I haven’t even said thank you yet.” And as you look, you see his face relax, his brow clear a little. He nods and gives you a hint of a smirk.

“Why don’t you say it now?”

You roll your eyes. “Fine. Thank you, Hal Lalonde, for helping me not die. I am forever under your debt.”

Hal’s smirk blossoms fully, his eyebrows pulling down over his eyes mischievously. “You’re welcome. Just try not to do it again. No offense, professor, but you make a  _ terrible _ damsel in distress.”

 

Despite yourself, you laugh. “I’ll keep that under advisement.” Then a thought hits you, and you frown. “Hey, speaking of my near-death experience, what happened to Scratch’s “corpse”?” You put finger quotes around the last word. “Did you roll it into a river or something?”

Hal shakes his head. “Nah, dumped it in the trunk of the car and drove it home. It’s sitting in Mom’s lab right now. There’s a high probability that she’ll take him apart when she recovers a little. What’s really freaky, though, is that we have no clue who built that thing.” He pauses, and a prickle of apprehension goes up your spine. “Fucking spooky,” he says at last, and you nod, before gingerly pushing yourself off the edge of the desk and down onto the floor.

“I think that’s a battle for another day,” you say, offering your hand to Hal. He takes it and jumps down, letting go just a second late. Then he shrugs.

“If you say so, professor.”

“I do. And Hal,” you say, voice flat. “You do know you can cool it with the “professor” shit, right?” He tilts his head, confused, and you give him a smirk. “Once someone saves my damn life, they’re allowed to call me by my first name.”

Hal’s eyes widen comically, and you have to suppress the urge to laugh. “Wait, what?”

“You,” you say, speaking extra slowly and pointing at him to be obvious, “can call me,” you point to yourself, “by my name.”

Hal hesitates for a second, then says it, as if trying it out. “Dirk.” Then he shakes his head. “God, that sounds weird.”

You shrug one shoulder, giving him a bit of a smile. “You’ll get used to it.”

And, eventually, he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everyone for reading this fic and helping me on the journey of writing it. It was sort of an uphill battle for me, but thanks to you guys and how supportive and enthusiastic you've been, I've actually managed to finish! Wow, holy fuck. It's been a wild ride, but now it's all over.... unless I write a sequel. ;D


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